‘Hotel Rwanda’ hero arrested on terror charges
Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed in the film Hotel Rwanda asa hero who saved the lives of more than 1,200 people from the country’s 1994 genocide, has been arrested by the Rwandan government on terror charges, police announced.
A well-known critic of President Paul Kagame, Rusesabagina had been living outside Rwanda since 1996 and police did not say where he was apprehended.
He had been living in Belgium and then in Texas, the United States.
Rusesabagina’s daughter Carine Kanimba said he travelled last week from the US to Dubai, where she alleged he was kidnapped and taken to Rwanda, but did not provide evidence to substantiate the claim.
In handcuffs and a face mask, Rusesabagina, 66, was shown to the press in Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Monday by police. He has not yet been formally charged in court.
“Through international cooperation, the Rwanda Bureau of Investigation wants to inform the general public that Paul Rusesabagina has been arrested,” police said on Monday.
“Rusesabagina is suspected to be the founder, leader, sponsor and member of violent, armed, extremist terror outfits, including the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change operating out of various places in the region and abroad.”
They said they had issued an arrest warrant for Rusesabagina to answer charges of serious crimes including terrorism, arson, kidnap and murder, perpetrated against unarmed, innocent Rwandan civilians on Rwandan territory.
Rusesabagina has been a prominent critic of Kagame’s government, calling it a dictatorship and urging Western countries to press the government to respect human rights.
Rusesabagina has won numerous international honours, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 and the Lantos Human Rights Prize in 2011.
The Rwandan government disputes Rusesabagina’s story about saving survivors at a hotel in Kigali during the genocide, in which more than 800,000 Tutsi and Hutus who tried to protect them were killed by Hutus.
The 2004 film Hotel Rwanda showed Rusesabagina, a Hutu married to a Tutsi, using his influence as a manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines to allow over 1,200 Tutsis to shelter in the hotel’s rooms. — AP