Finally, Paul Rusesabagina is free
Tragic and bitter would have been the irony if Paul Rusesabagina didn’t come home. In April 1994, over a span of 100 days, some 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered when the country’s majority Hutu targeted the minority Tutsi and moderate Hutus. As the world watched and did nothing, Rusesabagina used his position as manager of a luxury hotel to hide and shelter more than 1,200 potential victims.
He became famous when his heroism during one of the 20th century’s worst genocides was captured in the 2004 Academy Award-winning film “Hotel Rwanda.”
In 2005, President George W. Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In August 2020, the Rwandan government, of which Rusesabagina was its most prominent critic, lured him from San Antonio, where he’s had a home since 2009. He was arrested in Dubai, taken to Rwanda and falsely charged with crimes including terrorism, arson and murder. He was tortured for four days before his family knew what happened to him.
It would have been unforgivable, if a man whose intervention in a genocide that was notable for the world’s failure to intervene, had died in prison because the world didn’t care enough to act, or because he’d been forgotten.
But the international community cared and refused to forget, and now, Rusesabagina is coming home.
On Friday, the Rwandan government announced it was commuting the sentence of the 68-year-old Rusesabagina as well as those of 18 other prisoners who were sentenced alongside him.
Years of diplomatic pressure and talks brokered by Qatar led to the release. The United States has been especially vigorous in pressing for Rusesabagina’s release. The Biden administration has said that he was “wrongfully detained” and, last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the case with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Rusesabagina’s release is also an example of bipartisanship at its finest. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-san Antonio, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-texas, and their staffs, are to be commended for their consistent engagement in the case and their steadfast calling for his release. A resolution, introduced by Castro and U.S. Rep. Young Kim, R-calif. calling for Rusesabagina’s release on humanitarian grounds, was passed overwhelmingly in the House last July. Kathleen Tobin Krueger, wife of the late Bob Krueger, the former U.S. senator and ambassador to Burundi, a longtime family friend, told us Friday she spoke to Rusesabagina’s wife, Taciana, upon receiving the news of her husband’s release.
“We both nearly broke each other’s eardrums with our squealing and screaming and laughing,” Krueger said. “But it will be when Paul’s plane from Africa is wheels down on U.S. soil that we will breathe our deepest sighs of relief.”
Rusesabagina’s life has been defined by risking his comforts and freedom to save the lives of others and prevent suffering. It defined his actions in 1994 and, in the years since, has been showcased in his refusal to accept complacency and silence and his embrace of leveraging his fame in the cause of human rights.
A man who never sought to be a hero or teacher continues to be both.
“Paul saved so many lives during the Rwanda genocide,” Kreuger said. “Now it was the world’s turn to save him.”
The world and the United States did save him. That’s why Taciana exclaimed to Kreuger, “Thank you, America!”
Senior officials in the Biden administration confirmed that Rusesabagina had been released from prison in the capital of Kigali late Friday evening.
Welcome home, Paul Rusesabagina.
San Antonio resident released by Rwandan government after being wrongfully detained