The President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has pardoned the former manager of the hotel that inspired the famous film Hotel Rwanda (2004) about the genocide of 1994, Paul Rusesabagina, sentenced in 2021 to 25 years in prison for crimes of terrorism, confirmed today to EFE the government spokesperson, Yolande Makolo.
"Paul Rusesabagina (...) has had his prison sentence commuted by a presidential order after considering his requests for clemency," Makolo told EFE, noting that the pardon has also included 19 other members of the rebel group National Liberation Front (FLN), including its spokesperson, Callixte Nsabimana.
"He is expected to be released tomorrow," Makolo added about the fate of Rusesabagina, who was found guilty in 2021 of creating and financing the FLN in a trial criticized by the United States, the European Parliament and human rights groups, among others, for his alleged bias.
"Rwanda highlights the constructive role of the US government in creating the conditions for a dialogue on this issue, as well as the mediation provided by the State of Qatar," added the government spokeswoman.
As a source from the Ministry of Justice explained to EFE, the former manager, 68, will be taken after his release to the Qatari embassy in Kigali, "before being transferred to Qatar, where he will meet his family and later return to USA".
Rwandan authorities detained Rusesabagina, a Belgian national and US permanent resident, in August 2020 after a plane that was supposed to have taken him to neighboring Burundi landed in Kigali, what his family and lawyers described as a "kidnapping".
On September 20, 2021, the Kigali High Court Chamber for International and Cross-Border Crimes found him guilty of creating and financing the FLN, the armed wing of his party, the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD).
Thus, that court handed down a sentence of 25 years in prison in a judicial process rejected by NGOs such as Amnesty International (AI) or the United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who last August during an official visit to Rwanda claimed to have the "conviction that the trial was not fair".
The European Parliament issued a non-binding resolution in October 2021 condemning the irregular detention of Rusesabagina.
Rusesabagina is known worldwide for having been the manager of the Thousand Hills Hotel in Kigali, which housed more than a thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus to save them from death during the 1994 genocide, events that inspired the famous film Hotel Rwanda (2004, Terry George).
The former manager later became a highly critical opponent of Kagame, who has ruled Rwanda with an iron fist since 2000.
In a video posted on YouTube in 2018, five months after the FLN claimed responsibility for an attack that killed two civilians in southwestern Rwanda, Rusesabagina said that "the people of Rwanda can no longer bear cruelty and ill-treatment ( of the Kagame regime)" and called for "unconditional support" for that armed organization.
Since coming to power in 2000, the Rwandan president has won international recognition for his economic successes and rebuilding the country after the 1994 genocide.
However, human rights organizations have denounced on numerous occasions arbitrary arrests and disappearances of dissidents at the hands of their government.
In the past, opponents in Rwanda have been killed or disappeared for what the opposition has described as "political" reasons.
Freedom House's "Freedom in the World 2022" report found that while the Rwandan regime has maintained stability and economic growth in the country, it has also suppressed political dissent through widespread surveillance, intimidation, torture and alleged assassinations of exiled dissidents.
