Rwandan opponent Paul Rusesabagina was released from prison on March 25, while serving a 25-year prison sentence, after his kidnapping at Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai on August 27, 2020. with the complicity of one of his friends, who put an end to 25 years of exile in the United States, where he is a permanent resident, and in Belgium, where he obtained nationality in 1999. It was not the first Paul Kagame’s regime used shady methods to target its fiercest opponents, but the incredible arrest, which borders on state gangsterism, of the former boss of “The Thousand Hills Hotel had particularly aroused emotion among human rights defenders who had urged Kigali to respect the rights of the accused on whom heavy charges weighed. But as usual, the slender president of Rwanda remained inflexible and deaf to the appeals for clemency launched by the family and relatives of the man who answered nine counts for eight months in connection with acts of terrorism, until last week when he granted him a presidential pardon.
Since then, questions have been raining on the motivations of this extraordinary magnanimity of the Rwandan president vis-à-vis the one who was best known as the good Samaritan who had saved hundreds of people who had come to seek refuge and protection in his luxury hotel in the Center of Kigali in 1994, when the genocidaires were on their heels to exterminate them. Is it because he wants to get closer to the United States which had denounced the lack of fairness of the judicial sentence pronounced against the opponent? Or is it a simple nod to Qatar and its petrodollars, whose ambassador in Kigali had the honor and privilege to receive and “ to exfiltrate ” the now former resident of Nyarugenge civil prison to Doha, after having played a decisive role in the commutation of his sentence? One could also wonder if Paul Kagame, who never harbored the slightest feeling of pity for his opponents, was not an exception to the rule, after the opponent wrote to him to implore his forgiveness for all the crimes. he has committed against his country and to make an act of public contrition.
In any event, the Rwandan President has nothing to lose in this charm operation vis-à-vis his partners, especially as Paul Rusesabagina specified in his letter requesting pardon that not only did he not would no longer resume his political activities, but that he would return to quietly spend the rest of his old age in the United States with his family, probably so as not to fall into the same mess again. It is therefore the political end clap for the one who had inspired Terry George for the realization of his film ” Rwanda Hotel » released ten years after the genocide, and which retraced precisely the story of this moderate Hutu that was Paul Rusesabagina who had, at his own risk and peril, offered lodging and cover to more than a thousand Tutsis threatened with massacre. It is a cruel destiny for this almost septuagenarian in declining health, who entered the history of his country with a bang in the wake of the tragedy of 1994, and who comes out of it with his tail between his legs, death in the soul and the dream of one day becoming President of the Republic, definitively shattered. Hero for Hollywood, terrorist for Kigali, Paul Rusesabagina will forever remain this controversial man for his compatriots, who advocated both the democratic game and the armed struggle to gain power, from 1996; date of his exile, his arrest in Kigali in troubled circumstances in August 2020, his descent from a plane he thought was bound for Burundi. No one knows what will become of the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change of which he is one of the founders, nor of the National Liberation Forces which are the armed wing of his political party, which had carried out deadly attacks in the South West of Rwanda in 2018 and 2019, imputed to the now “ has been of the Rwandan political landerneau and which earned him the incompressible sentence of 25 years in prison. Nineteen other members of this politico-military group were also pardoned, but this small ” thinning may not benefit this political party which has never had a foothold in Rwanda since it was brought to the baptismal font in 2017.
The forced and early retirement of his figurehead risks being fatal to him, and it is still Paul Kagame who will open a new bottle of champagne, to toast the health of all those who have remained faithful to him almost thirty years after having conquered power. Paul Rusesabagina certainly comes to lengthen the long list of victims of the strong man of Kigali, but unlike others such as Bernard Ntaganda, Agnès Uwimana, Victoire Ingabire, Patrick Karegeya and Faustin Kayumba to name a few, his putting under extinguisher , far from making waves, has rather aroused sighs of relief in both Washington and Brussels; which is a very good sign for Rwanda, which did not ask for more in the current context where the international noose is tightening around it for its presumed support for the Congolese rebels of the M23.
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