Rwandan justice today detained the former director of the Hotel Mil Colinad in Kigali, who inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda” and saved hundreds of people in the 1994 genocide, accused of terrorism and belonging to an armed group
“Paul Rusesabagina is suspected of being the founder, leader, sponsor and member of violent, armed and extremist gangs,” said Mulangira Thierry, spokesman for the Rwanda Investigation Office (RIB) today.
Paul Rusesabagina, 66, became a very critical opponent of President Paul Kagamé and lived in exile between Belgium and the United States, where he created a foundation that promotes reconciliation to prevent new genocides.
The former manager of Rwanda’s most famous hotel, which housed more than 1,000 moderate Tutsis and Hutus during the genocide, to save them from extremist Hutus, had an international arrest warrant for crimes like murder and abduction of Rwandan civilians.
Rwandan justice accuses him of belonging to “terrorist groups”, as the platform of the opposition Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD-Ubumwe), of which he was founder, and which has military weapons that attacked Rwandan territory.
Rusesabagina’s work at Hotel Mil Colinas inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda” (2004), based on the story of this influential Hutu businessman, married to a Tutsi, who managed to protect about 1,200 people from the military and genocides by welcoming them on the premises of the hotel. In 2005, former President of the United States George Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work and heroic deeds.
