Paul Rusesabagina, the former manager who inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda”, was sentenced to 25 years in prison | For the “crime of terrorism”

The hero of the story that tells the movie “Hotel Rwanda” was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of terrorism in a trial described as “political” by his supporters and relatives. This is Paul Rusesabagina, opponent to the government of Paul Kagame and known for his role at the head of the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRDC), the political arm of the rebel group Front de liberation nationale (FLN).

Rusesabagina was sentenced on Monday for his support for this rebel group, accused of having carried out deadly attacks in Rwanda between 2018 and 2019. As Judge Beatrice Mukamurenzi ruled, Rusesabagina played a role in the creation of the FLN and funded the group, making it “guilty of the crime of terrorism”, Rwandan daily The New Times reported.

While the prosecution had requested a sentence equivalent to life imprisonment, Judge Beatrice Mukamurenzi stressed that the sentence of Rusesabagina, who can still appeal the decision, “should be reduced to 25 years”, since it is’ is the first against him.

The history of Rusesabagina

Rusesabagina, 67, was made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda”, published in 2004, recounting how this moderate representative of the Hutu ethnic group, interim manager of the Mille Collines hotel in Kigali, he succeeded, thanks to his contacts, to protect more than 1200 citizens within the establishment –– also from the other community in conflict with the Hutus, the Tutsis -, during the 1994 genocide which left 800,000 dead, mainly Tutsis.

According to the court judge, although Rusesabagina decided to no longer appear at the trial hearings, during the preliminary interrogations he would have “recognized” the remittance of funds to the FLN and rejected the argument that the MRDC sought to facilitate the repatriation of Rwandans in exile.

“The atrocities committed by this group are completely different from the mandate they say they had,” said the magistrate, who also admitted Callixte Nsabimana, a former spokesperson for the MRDC, guilty of terrorism charges.

In this sense, he argued that The MRCD had “different structures”, including the FLN as an armed wing, for which he stressed that “due to the actions of the FLN, the MRCD is a terrorist group”. “They attacked unarmed civilians in their everyday life,” said the judge, according to the Europa Press and AFP agencies.

However, although Rusesabagina acknowledged his ties to the FLN at the end of September, he maintained that his role was only of a “diplomatic” nature. Thus, he stated that the MRDC created the FLN “as an armed wing, not as a terrorist group as the prosecutor claims” and argued: “I’m not denying that the FLN committed crimes, but my role was diplomacy.”

Rusesabagina, an opponent of Kagame

Rusesabagina – opponent of the current Rwandan president Paul Kagame – was detained in Kigali in August 2020 and tried with 20 other suspects for their links with the MRCD and the FLN. They were investigated on nine counts, including forming a terrorist group, financing terrorist activities, murder and kidnapping.

One of the observations made by Rusesabagina at the opening of the trial was that the court does not have the power to judge him because he is of Belgian nationality. “I am not Rwandan, I am a Belgian hostage. I was kidnapped and now I am detained., he stated.

His family and supporters have always denounced the trial as “a spectacle offered by the Rwandan government to silence a critic and cool any future dissent.”, as well as the humiliating treatment while in detention. The United States, which awarded Rusesabagina the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the European Parliament and Belgium have also expressed concerns about the legitimacy of the trial.

The Rwandan president, for his part, responded to the criticisms in an interview in early September, assuring that Rusesabagina “would be judged as fairly as possible”.

Since 1996, Rusesabagina has lived in exile in the United States and Belgium, where he obtained nationality. In 2020, he was arrested in Kigali while traveling to Burundi by plane. The Rwandan government admitted to having “facilitated the trip” to Kigali, but claimed that the arrest was “legal” and that “their rights were never violated”.

According to international media, Rusesabagina used his notoriety in Hollywood to give global resonance to his increasingly vocal stances against Kagame, which allegedly sparked various attacks from supporters of the current president.