Rwanda has protested to Germany over the arrest of a top government official wanted in France over the death of a former president that sparked 100 days of genocidal killings in the central African nation.

Rose Kabuye, the director general of state protocol, was travelling on official government business when German police arrested her at Frankfurt airport on Sunday.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with Paris after a French judge issued warrants in 2006 for nine associates of President Paul Kagame, including Kabuye, over the 1994 plane crash that killed then president Juvenal Habyarimana.

"We immediately sent a protest note (to the German embassy in Kigali) ... we emphasised that Rose Kabuye holds a diplomatic passport ... therefore the German government shouldn’t have arrested her," Foreign Minister Rosemary Museminali told reporters late on Sunday.

The German ambassador was also summoned.

Museminali and Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama attended the conference which was called by the Minister of Information, Louise Mushikiwabo.

The ministers said that the Rwanda official was targeted maliciously saying that she was innocent.

“The indictments are just concoctions. It is just a political game played to cover up the truth,” said Karugarama.

“The French are using a flawed legal process. We have always been surprised that people can take these bogus indictments seriously. How can you condemn someone before even bothering to hear their side of the story?” he wondered.

Mushikiwabo said the arrests were a "political game designed to blur the truth and weaken the government".

It said Kabuye had been warned against going to Germany due to the arrest warrants, but she had travelled there and other European countries earlier in the year without incident.

"Kabuye is innocent, which is why she undertook the trip despite warnings, and ultimately why she is ready to face trial in France," she said.

In April, Kagame made a four-day state visit to Germany. According to media reports, Kabuye was on that trip but German law prohibits the detention of any members of an official delegation.

Under French law, a warrant cannot be issued for Kagame because a serving head of state has immunity.

The prosecution department is expected to issues indictments soon.

A case filed by Rose Kabuye, a former Lt. Colonel in the Rwandan army, and two other retired officers, Sam Kanyemera and Jacob Tumwine, challenging the indictments has been ignored by the French authorities.

Two current Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) Generals Charles Kayonga and Jack Nziza, who were also indicted, petitioned a Belgian court demanding that the arrest warrants be quashed and disregarded with damages; their case will be heard in January next year after more than a year and a half in the court corridors.

Rwanda also filed a case against France in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) but France opted not to respond to the ICJ to defend itself.

”Why do you think France refused to go to The Hague? There is an answer in their refusal to go to court,” said Karugarama.

Mushikiwabo expressed the government’s frustration over several master minders of the 1994 Tutsi Genocide who are still enjoying freedom and protection in European capitals including Germany and France; “even as they continue to pursue their extermination plans on the European soil.”

Last week, Germany released two notorious genocidaires, including Callixte Mbarushimana, The secretary General of the DRC-based Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), remnants of people who carried out the 1994 Genocide of Tutsis.

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Habyarimana’s plane was hit by a missile, and his death triggered the killing of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Kagame was then leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front which defeated the Habyarimana government’s Hutu militias to end the genocide.

Though Rwanda was a Belgian colony until independence in 1962, France kept close links with Kigali from 1975 to 1994, giving financial and military support.

Reuters, additional reporting by The New Times