His Excellency Dr. Majid Al-Ansari, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced that Rwandan dissident Paul Rusesabagina will be transferred to Qatar, which mediated his release, and then to the United States.
The Rwandan government announced on Friday that it had reduced his prison sentence. Paul Rusesabagina was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2021 on charges related to “terrorism”.
Below we review the most important information about Rusesabagina, who is one of the most prominent opponents in his country:
Rusesabagina was a hotel manager in Kigali and is credited with helping to save hundreds of lives during the 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 people died. The man whose story inspired the 2004 movie “Hotel Rwanda” became one of Kagame’s harshest critics.
The United States said Rusesabagina, who holds Belgian citizenship and a US green card, was “unjustly detained” after a plane carrying him to Burundi was diverted to Rwanda in 2020.
He was accused of supporting the National Liberation Front, a rebel group blamed for attacks inside Rwanda in 2018 and 2019 that killed nine people, which he denied. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and rights groups have raised the issue with Rwanda, but Kagame said last year the United States could not “intimidate” him into ordering his release.
Last year, his family filed a $400 million lawsuit in the United States against Kagame, the Rwandan government and other figures for allegedly kidnapping and torturing him.
