March 25 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’, has been released from prison this Saturday after obtaining a pardon from the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, of whom he is a recognized opponent, and after having been sentenced in 2021 to 25 years for terrorism crimes .
“I am grateful for the release of Paul Rusesabagina by the Rwandan government. Paul’s family is anxious to welcome him back to the United States, and I myself share the happiness of this good news,” said the US president. Joe Biden in a statement.
The Secretary of the US Department of State, Antony Blinken, has also shared his support for the release of Rusesabagina and has asked not to use “political violence”.
The spokesperson for the Rwandan government, Yolande Makolo, has qualified on CNN that the pardon “does not exempt from sentence” and has thanked the United States and Qatar for having helped to obtain these conditions for his release, which has also specified, comes after a letter of pardon from Rusesabagina to President Kagame.
Rusesabagina was arrested in August 2020 and sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Rwandan Supreme Court for his role at the head of the MRDC, the political wing of the National Liberation Front (FLN) rebel group, which claimed responsibility for several attacks between 2018 and 2019 that resulted in at least nine deaths.
The United Nations denounced that the detention was carried out arbitrarily and under strange circumstances, in addition to questioning the impartiality of the trial. In turn, he recalled Rusesabagina’s record as a critic of the Kagame government and in defense of Human Rights.
Rusesabagina is world famous for the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’. As acting manager of the Mille Collines Hotel in Kigali, he was able to protect more than 1,200 Tutsis and moderate Hutus within the establishment during the 1994 genocide — in which nearly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred — by leveraging his connections .
