Paul Rusesabagina, a businessman whose role in saving more than 1,000 lives during the 1994 genocide inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of terrorism offences by a court in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.
The 67-year-old was found guilty on Monday after a seven-month trial and faces a life sentence. Rwandan authorities accused Rusesabagina of being “the founder, leader, sponsor and member of violent, armed, extremist terror outfits … operating out of various places in the region and abroad.” He denied all the charges against him.
Prosecutors sought a life sentence, but the judge Beatrice Mukamurenzi said the term “should be reduced to 25 years” as it was for a first conviction.
Security forces were deployed in and around the court, which was packed with journalists and diplomats from foreign embassies. Judges took several hours to read the lengthy judgment.
Rusesabagina was arrested in Kigali in August 2020 after a sophisticated operation to lure him back to Rwanda from exile in the US. He had travelled to Dubai where he boarded a private jet that he believed would take him to a meeting in Burundi but which landed instead in Kigali.
The abduction was aimed at silencing Rusesabagina’s outspoken criticism of Rwanda’s veteran president, Paul Kagame, supporters of the former hotelier say.
“Our husband and father was forced to undergo a show trial this past year. We knew from the day he was kidnapped that the verdict would be ‘guilty’ on some or all of the false charges. We are happy that the charade of the trial is ending … a dictator will be jailing a humanitarian this week,” the family of Rusesabagina said in a statement after the verdict.
Yolande Makolo, a spokesperson for the Rwandan government, said the trial had “exposed the terrorist activities of the FLN group led by Rusesabagina. The evidence against the accused was indisputable, and the people of Rwanda will feel safer now justice has been delivered.”
The trial opened in February and Rusesabagina, a Belgian citizen and US green card holder, refused to attend hearings after his request to postpone the trial to prepare his defence was rejected in March. His lawyer said Rusesabagina’s legal papers were confiscated by prison authorities. Twenty co-defendants are facing lengthy prison terms on similar charges.
Kagame, who won a third term in power with 98% of the vote in elections in 2017, is a polarising figure who is credited with the development and stability that Rwanda has experienced since the genocide but is also accused of intolerance of any criticism, whether domestic or international.
Several unsolved murders of Rwandan dissidents in African countries have been blamed on Kigali, though Kagame’s government has strenuously denied any responsibility.
South African investigators have said the government was directly involved in the killing of Patrick Karegeya, an outspoken critic of Kagame, in Johannesburg in 2014. Rwanda has denied any link to Karegeya’s murder, though two weeks later Kagame warned in a public speech that “any person still alive who may be plotting against Rwanda, whoever they are, will pay the price. Whoever it is, it is a matter of time.”
In July the Guardian reported that Rusesabagina’s daughter, Carine Kanimba, had been spied on using Pegasus malware developed by the Israeli company NSO. Forensic analysis by Anesty International found that a phone belonging to Kanimba, a US-Belgian dual national, had been compromised multiple times.
Rusesabagina was the general manager of a luxury hotel in Kigali during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. An estimated 800,000 people were killed with knives, clubs and other weapons in the genocide. Most of the victims were ethnic Tutsis but some were moderate Hutus.
The 2004 film told the story of how Rusesabagina used his influence and bribery to save the lives of 1,200 people who sheltered at the Mille Collines hotel in the capital during the worst of the massacres.
Rusesabagina became disillusioned with the new Tutsi-dominated government led by Kagame, the rebel leader turned president whose forces ended the mass killings, and he left Rwanda in 1996, fleeing to Belgium and the US.
In 2004 the American actor Don Cheadle played Rusesabagina, a moderate Hutu, in the Oscar-nominated blockbuster that brought his story to an international audience. A year later, Rusesabagina was honoured with a presidential medal of freedom, the highest civilian honour in the US, by George W Bush.
The Rwandan government disputes Rusesabagina’s story about saving people during the genocide, and Ibuka, a Rwandan genocide survivors’ group, has said in the past that Rusesabagina exaggerated his role in helping people escape.
Rusesabagina’s family said the cancer survivor, who is in poor health, was subjected to torture during his first four days in captivity. “This was an early sign – no fair trial begins with a kidnapping … then held in solitary confinement for more than 250 days, in violation of the UN’s rules for the treatment of prisoners. He has been mistreated under international standards throughout his imprisonment,” a spokesperson said.
Sophie Wilmès, the foreign minister of Belgium, said Rusesabagina had not received a fair trial despite repeated appeals by the former colonial power.
Rwandan authorities have denied any flaws in the investigation or trial, and have said there was “no wrongdoing in the process of [Rusesabagina] getting” to Kigali. “He got here on the basis of what he believed and wanted to do. It was like he called a wrong number … It was flawless,” Kagame said last year.
The case against Rusesabagina centred on his alleged connection to a series of raids into Rwanda by rebels in neighbouring countries over the last decade.
Prosecutors said he recruited dozens of fighters of the Forces for National Liberation (FLN), a rebel group that has carried out a number deadly attacks in Rwanda in recent years. The FLN was the military wing of the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD) political party, which Rusesabagina helped to found. Nine died in two attacks in 2018 blamed on the group, including two children.
In June prosecutors said Rusesabagina had “encouraged and empowered the fighters to commit those terrorist acts” – a charge he denied.
During the trial, co-defendants gave conflicting and inconsistent testimony about the level of Rusesabagina’s involvement with the FLN and its fighters.
These included Callixte Nsabimana, the FLN’s leader, who went missing in 2019 in the Comoros Islands only to reappear two weeks later in Kigali in police detention, charged with terrorism offences. Nsabimana was among twenty co-defendants, all handcuffed and dressed in pale pink prison uniforms, who attended Monday’s hearing. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for forgery and organising terrorist attacks.
Kagame has rejected the charge of orchestrating a “show trial”, saying Rusesabagina was put on trial not because of his high profile but over the lives lost “because of his actions”.
“He is here being tried for that. Nothing to do with the film. Nothing to do with celebrity status,” Kagame said in television interview this month, promising that Rusesabagina would be “fairly tried”.
Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader in Rwanda who spent six years in prison for terrorism, said the Rusesabagina verdict had not been in doubt.
“In a country where freedom is limited, all power is in the hands of the executive … How could a judge dare to take a decision incompatible with the wishes of the president?” she said.