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LONDON — A Rwandan judge is set to deliver a verdict in the high-profile case today.
After spending more than a year behind bars, the man who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda” is due to learn his fate.
A Rwandan judge is set to deliver a verdict today in the closely watched trial of former hotelier Paul Rusesabagina and 20 co-defendants, who are accused of terrorism-related offences.
A decision in the high-profile case was expected a month ago, but was postponed, with no reason given for the delay.
Rusesabagina, who was tried on a number of charges including murder and financing terrorism, could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. He has maintained his innocence, while his family and attorneys have condemned the trial as a “sham.”
“We are happy that the charade of the trial is ending,” the Rusesabagina family told ABC News in a statement ahead of the verdict. “We assume they will finish the sham by finding him guilty on today. We have told the world over and over that there is no fair trial process in Rwanda, and the past months have shown that. There is no independent judiciary, and there will be no justice for our father. All we can do now is make this clear to everyone — a dictator will be jailing a humanitarian.”
Rusesabagina, a 67-year-old married father of six, was the manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when divisions between the East African nation’s two main ethnic groups came to a head. The Rwandan government, controlled by extremist members of the Hutu ethnic majority, launched a systemic campaign with its allied Hutu militias to wipe out the Tutsi ethnic minority, slaughtering more than 800,000 people over the course of 100 days, mostly Tutsis and the moderate Hutus who tried to protect them, according to estimates from the United Nations.
More than 1,200 people took shelter in the Hotel des Mille Collines during what is often described as the darkest chapter of Rwanda’s history. Rusesabagina, who is of both Hutu and Tutsi descent, said he used his job and connections with the Hutu elite to protect the hotel’s guests from massacre. The events were later immortalized in “Hotel Rwanda,” with American actor Don Cheadle’s portrayal of Rusesabagina earning an Academy Award nomination for best actor in 2005.
After the movie’s release, Rusesabagina rose to fame and was lauded as a hero. He also became a prominent and outspoken critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has been in office for the last two decades. Some genocide survivors who stayed at the Hotel des Mille Collines have since accused Rusesabagina of exaggerating his role in saving them or even profiting from it.
Rusesabagina, who fled Rwanda with his family in 1996 and is now a Belgian citizen and permanent U.S. resident, travelled to Dubai on Aug. 27, 2020, to meet up with a Burundi-born pastor who Rusesabagina alleges had invited him to speak at churches in Burundi about his experience during the Rwandan genocide. Later that night, the pair hopped on a private jet that Rusesabagina believed would take them to Burundi’s capital, according to Rusesabagina’s international legal team.
Rusesabagina did not know that the pastor was working as an informant for the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) and had tricked him into boarding a chartered flight to Kigali.
Rwandan prosecutors allege that Rusesabagina wanted to go to Burundi to coordinate with rebel groups based there and in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The charges that Rusesabagina faces stem from his leadership of an exiled opposition coalition called the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change, known by its French acronym MRCD. In 2018, there were a series of deadly attacks on villages in southern Rwanda, near the country’s border with Burundi, and Rwandan authorities inculpated the National Liberation Front, or FLN, which is the armed wing of the MRCD. In a video statement released later that year, Rusesabagina pledged his “unreserved support” for the FLN, declared Kagame’s government to be “the enemy of the Rwandan people” and called for “any means possible to bring about change.”
Rusesabagina has acknowledged that the MRCD had an armed wing but denied his involvement. The 20 other defendants in the trial are accused of being FLN organizers and fighters. — abcnews.
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