Hotel Rwanda hero: “They hold me hostage here”

Of: Sophie Tanha

Published: February 18, 2021 at 11:11 p.m.

Amid the brutal genocide in Rwanda, an unexpected hero was formed in the form of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina.

After years in exile, he was brought back to Rwanda last year, this time in handcuffs. Now he risks 25 years in prison for, among other things, terrorist crimes.

-Here they hold me hostage, he said yesterday during the first day of the trial.

When Paul Rusesabagina allowed vulnerable Rwandans to take refuge in his luxury hotel in Kigali in 1994, he hardly had Hollywood in mind. But it is through the star-studded film Hotel Rwanda that he became immortalized as the hero who, by bribing extremists, saved 1,268 people from violent death.

He left the war-torn country two years after the worst massacre occurred, in 1996. Since then, Paul Rusesabagina has been abroad, mainly in the United States and Belgium, of which he is a citizen.

Photograph: ERIK MÅRTENSSON / TT

Paul Rusesabagina.

With the newfound fame the film brought, Rusesabagina created a platform in which he openly criticized Rwanda’s sitting president in 2000, Paul Kagame.

When Paul Rusesabagina, now 66, suddenly found himself on Rwandan soil for the first time in 16 years in August 2020, he was wearing handcuffs.

Tricked back to Rwanda

How he came to set foot in the country again was at first a mystery.

“He was not actually on his way here, he was on his way to Burundi,” Rusesabagina himself told the NY Times in an interview from prison.

According to the last the family heard from him, he was about to board a plane in Dubai, where he made a stopover on his way from Chicago to Burundi, where he was invited to speak in churches. But the plane landed in Rwanda where he was immediately arrested. Allegations that Rusesabagina was kidnapped against his will were dismissed by President Kagame, in a televised appearance in which he said the operation went smoothly.

– When I landed, I thought I had come to Bujumbura (Burundi city, editor’s note), he said.

The trial against him has already begun. Along with 20 other people, he is suspected of 13 crimes, including terrorism, murder and financing of uprisings. He is said to have supported the FNL, the National Liberation Front, a rebel group accused of several deadly attacks in Rwanda.

“They hold me hostage here”

If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison. Right now, Rusesabagina has access to an hour of outdoor stay every day and can call her family once a week. Parts of his defense team have been denied entry to Kigali, where the trial is taking place.

The defense’s main hope is the fact that Rusesabagina renounced his citizenship in Rwanda. They hope that the case will be tried in Belgium.

During the first day of the trial, Wednesday February 17, Rusesabagina said that the authorities had kidnapped him.

– I am a Belgian citizen. They hold me hostage here, he said.

Published: February 18, 2021 at 11:11 p.m.