He is the Rwandan hotel manager who became a global hero after his bravery sheltering more than 1,200 people from blood-thirsty militias during the 1994 genocide was turned into an Oscar-nominated movie.
Now in a bizarre plot twist, Paul Rusesabagina, 66, has spent the past five months languishing in a Rwandan jail accused of terrorism, arson and murder by a government his family says abducted him from Dubai and wants him dead.
On Tuesday he will appear in court in Kigali on nine charges they insist are a sham. He has had little access to a lawyer and in his brief weekly phone calls home complains of headaches and dizziness.
“I am very scared,” said his wife, Taciana, 62. “Paul’s health is in a bad place, he is not being allowed his usual blood pressure pills and I am worried he will have a stroke.”
Rusesabagina became the world’s most famous Rwandan after the 2004 Hollywood movie Hotel Rwanda told how the manager of the five-star Mille Collines used his contacts with the Hutu elite, as well as supplies of Scotch and cigars, to protect hundreds of Tutsis from rampaging mobs who butchered 800,000 people in 100 days.
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He was feted by Oprah Winfrey, awarded America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2005 and invited to speak all over the world.
But he also became an outspoken critic of President Kagame, whose rebel forces ended the genocide and likes to see himself as the saviour of his nation.
Kagame has invested heavily in cultivating western leaders, particularly in the UK, joining the Commonwealth although Rwanda was a Belgian, not British, colony, welcoming numerous Tory MPs (David Cameron led a group on an away-week to do aid projects) and spending £30m sponsoring the shirt sleeves of his favourite football club, Arsenal. This year’s Commonwealth heads of government conference will be held in Kigali.
The small mountainous nation is often held up as a model of stability and progress in Africa. Women make up 61% of parliament, the highest proportion on earth, as well as more than half the cabinet. It has ecological credentials too: plastic bags are banned.
Behind this shiny façade, however, others depict an authoritarian regime that brooks no dissent and regularly “disappears” opponents both at home and abroad. Its former spy chief was found strangled in a South African hotel room after setting up a new party, and a popular gospel singer allegedly committed suicide in jail. Bodies of opposition politicians have been found mutilated in woodland.
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“We have extensively documented cases of attacks and threats against dissidents and critics of the ruling RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) – both within Rwanda’s borders and abroad, including in the UK,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, which has denounced Rusesabagina’s arrest as “a forced disappearance”.
“Speaking out against Paul Kagame inside the country is a death sentence,” said Professor Brian Endless, director of African studies at Loyola University, Chicago, and a long-time friend of Rusesabagina.
Rusesabagina disappeared on August 27 last year after arriving in Dubai for meetings. His wife said he usually checked in with her every evening when travelling but after a brief WhatsApp message that night with birthday greetings for his grandson, they heard nothing.
Four days later he appeared in the Rwandan capital, paraded in handcuffs by the government, which said it had arrested him on his arrival.
“We were all shocked,” said his daughter, Carine Karimba, 27. “I book his travel and he’d had no intention of going to Rwanda and would never have gone there voluntarily.”
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Rusesabagina left the country in 1996 after an assassination attempt. Initially the family moved to Brussels, where according to Karimba the regime continued to pursue him. “Our house was broken into three times and only documents related to Rwanda were taken, and they tried to kill my dad in a car crash.”
When the Belgian government refused to provide security, she said, they moved to a gated community in Texas and became permanent US residents. The harassment did not stop.
Every time he gave a presentation, his hosts “would get a letter saying they were bringing in a genocide denier and Rwandan agents would turn up at events to disrupt,” said Kitty Kurth, a public relations strategist who advises Rusesabagina’s foundation.
In August he went to Dubai to meet a priest from Burundi he knew as “the Bishop”. The family now believes it was a trap. According to investigations by Endless he was taken, bound and blindfolded, onto a private jet. “The Bishop has dropped off the radar and we believe he was a Rwandan agent,” the professor said.
The family are getting backing from the Clooney Foundation and the American Bar Association but three international lawyers they have hired have been refused visas. Rusesabagina has no access to his indictment, case-file or any documents necessary for the preparation of his defence, they say.
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“They want to put him through a fake trial to make an example of him,” said Karimba. “The message is if they can get to Paul Rusesabagina, they can get to anyone in the world.”
She, her mother and two siblings fear he will not survive. “We know he’s not well,” said Karimba. “We’re allowed to talk just five minutes a week and last Friday he said he was getting very bad headaches. He’s been taken three times to hospital but we don’t know why.
“He suffers hypertension and they are not giving him his usual blood pressure pills we sent via the Belgian embassy but something, we don’t know what,” she added. His doctor in Belgium wrote a letter warning that interruption of medication he has taken since 1996 could result in a stroke.
Karimba has also been receiving mysterious messages from someone claiming to be one of his prison guards offering to facilitate an escape, which she believes is a trap.
“It started early November and they’ve been getting increasingly insistent,” she said. “First on Twitter then on WhatsApp saying ‘your father gave me your number’. But I changed my phone and my father doesn’t have this [number].”
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She ignored the messages and reported them to the Belgian and American authorities but fears a replay of the death of the Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Mihigo in Kigali jail last February, three days after being arrested allegedly trying to flee the country.
“We believe they are trying to get us to respond so they can say Paul Rusesabagina is trying to escape with the help of his daughter, then stage a breakout and kill him. It’s exactly what they did to Kizito: they killed him in prison and said he was trying to escape and committed suicide.
“I believe my dad is in danger and we need help,” she added. “They know these charges are all invented so their way out of this is if he’s dead, and that’s very scary.”
Rwanda’s National Public Prosecution Authority said yesterday: “Paul Rusesabagina was neither kidnapped nor extradited. He departed Dubai voluntarily by private jet and voluntarily alighted in Rwanda, where he was placed under arrest pursuant to a 2018 NPPA arrest warrant.
“In an interview with The East African, Mr Rusesabagina clearly stated that he was being treated ‘with kindness’, that he was able to choose his defence team, and that he has been provided with medication for his cardiovascular condition. This remains the case.
“Mr Rusesabagina is being tried following an investigation based on judicial co-operation between Rwanda and Belgium. He stands accused of criminal offences related to his leadership role in the armed group known as MRCD/FLN (Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change/National Liberation Front), a group to which he has publicly pledged his full support. Charges include financing terrorism, kidnapping and arson.”
