Paul Rusesabagina, who inspired the film Rwanda Hotel and is a staunch opponent of President Paul Kagame, was released on Friday after the government announced it had commuted his 25-year sentence for “terrorism”. Rusesabagina, who has Belgian citizenship and permanently resides in the United States, was handed over to the Qatari ambassador before his return to the United States, a US official said.
The opponent “is at the residence of the Qatari ambassador”, said this official. Washington is “grateful” to Rwanda for having released him, said the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken.
Belgium also hailed “the Rwandan government’s decision to grant Paul Rusesabagina a remission”. “We hope that he will soon be reunited with his family,” Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said in a statement.
International condemnation
The conviction of Paul Rusesabagina, dating from September 2021, had aroused international disapproval and defenders of rights. “Paul Rusesabagina and (his co-defendant) Callixte Nsabimana had their prison sentences commuted by presidential order, after consideration of their requests for clemency,” Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo told AFP.
The sentences of 18 other people for terrorism have also had their sentences commuted, she added. According to a government source who requested anonymity, the other detainees should be released on Saturday.
Yolande Makolo specified that Rwanda “notes the constructive role of the American government in the establishment of conditions for dialogue on this issue, as well as the facilitation provided by Qatar”. But she added that “no one should be under any illusions about what that means, because there is a consensus that serious crimes have been committed, for which they have been convicted”.
“Shared desire” for a reboot of the relationship with Washington
This case has long been a source of contention between Kigali and Washington. In May 2022, Washington considered that he was “unjustly detained” by Rwandan justice and Kagame replied that the United States could not “intimidate” him to force him to release him.
This decision “is the result of a shared desire to reset US-Rwanda relations,” the president’s press secretary, Stéphanie Nyombayire, said on Twitter. According to a senior US official on condition of anonymity, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Kigali in August “played a key role in the prospect of Paul’s eventual release”. Stéphanie Nyombayire for her part underlined that “the close relations between Rwanda and Qatar have been key”.
Talks on a release of the opponent had started at the end of 2022 and a breakthrough occurred last week during discussions between President Kagame and the Emir of Qatar, said a source familiar with the matter.
Kigali’s announcement comes nearly two weeks after President Kagame indicated during a visit to Qatar that “discussions” were underway regarding the imprisonment of Paul Rusesabagina.
Supporters of the opponent believe that his trial was a sham marked by irregularities. And his family had alerted to the declining state of health of the 68-year-old man. He was detained for 939 days, according to the Free Rusesabagina website.
“International Standards”
Paul Rusesabagina was made famous by the film “Hotel Rwanda”, released in 2004, which tells how this moderate Hutu who ran the Hotel des Mille Collines in the Rwandan capital saved more than 1,000 people during the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994.
Opponent for more than 20 years to Paul Kagame, whom he has accused of authoritarianism and of fueling anti-Hutu sentiment, Rusesabagina has used his Hollywood fame to give a global echo to his positions. His tirades against Kagame have earned him treatment as an enemy of the state.
Human rights defenders accuse Rwanda – ruled with an iron fist by Mr. Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed – of repressing freedom of expression and the opposition.
Paul Rusesabagina had lived in exile in the United States and Belgium since 1996, before being arrested in Kigali in 2020 in troubled circumstances, when he got off a plane he thought was bound for Burundi. “His release would conclude a case that underscored Rwanda’s blatant disregard for international standards,” Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director for Human Rights Watch, told AFP earlier in the day.
The opponent was tried from February to July 2021 on nine counts, including that of “terrorism”, for attacks carried out by the FLN, an organization classified as terrorist by Kigali, which killed nine people in 2018 and 2019. Paul Rusesabagina admitted to having participated in the founding in 2017 of the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), of which the FLN is considered the armed wing, but he has always denied any involvement in the attacks.