Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Sunday (September 5th) rejected the many criticisms leveled against the "
terrorism
"
trial
targeting Paul Rusesabagina, a former hotelier who saved a thousand people during the 1994 genocide and whose story inspired the film "
Hotel Rwanda
".
Read alsoThe strange arrest of the hero of "
Hotel Rwanda
"
The United States, which awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the European Parliament and even Belgium have expressed their concerns about the conditions of his arrest and the fairness of his trial.
Paul Rusesabagina, 67, is on trial for his alleged support for the National Liberation Front (FLN), a rebel group accused of attacks in 2018 and 2019, which killed nine people in this East African country. He is targeted by nine counts, including that of "
terrorism
". “
He's here being tried for it. It has nothing to do with the movie. Nothing to do with his celebrity status
", said Paul Kagame in an interview on national television,"
it is about the lives of Rwandans lost because of his actions and because of the organizations to which he belonged or which he led.
".
Paul Rusesabagina and his family reject these allegations and claim that he is the victim of a politically motivated show trial because he is a vocal opponent of President Kagame. Prosecutors have called for life in prison. The verdict is expected on September 20. Paul Kagame stressed that he deserved "
to be tried fairly in court
" and that he would be "
tried as fairly as possible
".
Paul Rusesabagina has denied any involvement in the attacks, but he is one of the founders of the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), an opposition group of which the FLN is considered the armed wing. He was made famous by the film "
Hotel Rwanda
" which tells how this former manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, a moderate Hutu, saved more than 1,000 people during the 1994 genocide which left 800,000 dead, mainly from the Tutsi minority.
He had been living in exile since 1996 in the United States and Belgium, countries from which he acquired nationality. He was arrested in August 2020 in Rwanda in murky circumstances, when a plane he thought was bound for Burundi got off. The Rwandan government admitted to having "
facilitated (his) journey
" to Kigali, but claimed that the arrest was "
legal
". Paul Rusesabagina and his lawyers have boycotted the hearings since March, denouncing a “
political
”
trial
made possible by his “
kidnapping
”.
In power since 1994, Paul Kagame is accused by his detractors of repressing his opponents and of reigning through fear. On Sunday, he dismissed allegations that Kigali used Israeli surveillance software Pegasus, after an international media investigation revealed that more than 3,500 Rwandans - including Paul Rusesabagina's daughter - were potentially being spied on by the software. “
To the question of whether we spy with this tool, the answer is no,
” said the Rwandan president, “
but like any other country in the world, Rwanda collects intelligence and there are many ways to do it
” .
