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Opponent of Rwandan President Paul Kagame had been sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges. After being locked up for 31 months, the sentence of the sexagenarian was commuted. The United States, which had protested against his arrest, will welcome him.
He inspired the Hollywood movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ before becoming an opponent of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Paul Rusesabagina, imprisoned since August 2020 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in September 2021, for various acts related to a terrorist enterprise, will be released this Saturday.
His sentence was commuted by presidential order, according to a statement from the Rwandan Ministry of Justice published on Friday.
Statement by the Minister of Justice on the commutation by Presidential Order of prison sentences of Paul Rusesabagina & Callixte Nsabimana. 18 members of MRCD-FLN & 358 other individuals convicted of various offenses were granted collective commutation.https://t.co/lZZzaKcbP9
— Yolande Makolo ?? (@YolandeMakolo) March 24, 2023
Rwandan law allows certain sentences to be commuted, provided the convicted person apologizes. This legal procedure was widely used in the case of crimes related to the Tutsi genocide, especially to shorten certain sentences and relieve prison congestion.
“Participation in a terrorist enterprise”
Another 19 people, members of the National Liberation Forces (FLN), the armed wing of the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), will also be released. Rusesabagina, who led the MRCD from abroad, had confirmed his participation in the FLN, a group responsible for attacks that left nine dead in 2018 and 2019 in southwestern Rwanda, but had denied any involvement in these crimes.
To convict him, the prosecution had relied on statements by other members of the group, exchanges of text messages, but also on a search of his home in Belgium. In a video posted on the Internet at the end of 2018, the opponent had also declared his support for the armed struggle.
“Since July, the FLN has launched a military struggle to liberate the Rwandan people. It is imperative that in 2019 we accelerate the liberation struggle, the Rwandan people can no longer bear the cruelty and all kinds of mistreatment inflicted on us by the regime. It has arrived. “It is time for us to use all possible means to bring about change. As all political means have been tried and have failed, the time has come to try our last resort,” he had said.
An international fame
In a letter written on October 14, 2022 from his cell, Rusesabagina expressed regret for the “violent actions” of the FLN and asked President Kagame to pardon him. He also vowed to stay out of issues related to Rwandan politics.
Rusesabagina had left Rwanda in 1996, considering that the country offered less and less space to the opposition, and lived between the United States and Belgium. In 2004 he became famous for the film ‘Hotel Rwanda’, which shows how the then manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines saved 1,268 Tutsis in his establishment during the genocide that killed one million people in 1994. Although his role , as portrayed by Hollywood was quite embellished, according to some survivors, it gave him international fame.
In his exile, he worked for a long time as a taxi driver and lectured around the world on the genocide, the Great Lakes region and Rwanda. He has also become a critic of the government of Paul Kagame, president since 2000. In August 2020, he was detained in controversial circumstances when he was getting off a private jet in Kigali en route to Burundi.
US-Qatar mediation
His release comes at a time when Rwanda has weakened on the international scene.
The Government of Paul Kagame has been accused by several UN reports of supporting the M23 armed group, which has launched an offensive in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has caused tens of thousands of refugees and violations of rights. humans. Therefore, the release of the opponent could ease some diplomatic tensions, especially with Washington, which demanded his release.
During a visit to Kigali in August 2022, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had expressed concern about the fate of the detainee. “As I told the president, we believe that people in all countries should be able to express their opinions without fear of intimidation, imprisonment, violence or any other form of repression,” he told a news conference in the Rwandan capital. .
Qatar also played an active role in Rusesabagina’s release. On Twitter, the Rwandan official in charge of relations with the media, Stéphanie Nyombayire, confirmed this, insisting that “the close bilateral relationship between Rwanda and Qatar played a key role” in this release.
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