‘No one can silence me’: Paul Rusesabagina on his imprisonment in Rwanda
With his hands and legs bound and his mouth gagged, Rwanda’s most prominent dissident was relieved when he finally took off his blindfold after two days in detention.
In front of him were two senior Rwandan government officials, he said, who blocked the blinding light and promised to release him quickly if he cooperated. He said they promised him any government post he wanted — an ambassadorship, a ministerial position, just not the presidency — if he revealed the foreign governments and accomplices they suspected of supporting his rebellion.
“You can have anything you want,” Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier whose heroism in the face of the 1994 genocide inspired the Oscar-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda,” recalled officials telling him. “It’s up to you to make a choice.”
But Mr. Rusesabagina knew he had no choice.
Instead, just days after he was captured in August 2020 in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, that episode began with a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence that brought international investigation into the landlocked nation in Central Africa. Mr. Rusesabagina was tortured and denied medication, he said, and then charged with terrorism and sentenced to 25 years in prison in a process that led to worldwide condemnation.
In an interview with The New York Times, his first since he was released from prison in March in a deal brokered by the United States, Mr. Rusesabagina described the 939 days he spent in detention, explained his relationship with a pastor who lured him back to Rwanda, and denied allegations that he intended to violently overthrow the Rwandan government. Some of his claims could not be independently verified and contradicted things he had said before.
The government of Rwanda has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Mr. Rusesabagina broke his silence despite having done so wrote a letter asking for forgiveness of President Paul Kagame last year and promised to retire “in quiet contemplation” if released. Instead, Rusesabagina, 69, said he would speak out again against Mr Kagame, whom he accused of making Rwanda a “protected private property”.
“They expected me to keep quiet. To be a good guy and behave,” Rusesabagina said last weekend at his home in a gated community in San Antonio, where he moved with his family in 2009 after he said his life was threatened by Rwandan agents in Belgium.
“No one can silence me that easily,” Mr. Rusesabagina said calmly, surrounded by posters made for his April homecoming and balloons from his recent birthday party.
In time for Independence Day in Rwanda on July 1, he released a video proclaiming that Rwandans were still not free under Kagame’s regime and that many political prisoners are facing mock trials like him. He urged the international community to stop working with Kagame, likening it to working with South Africa’s apartheid government. Rwanda made striking deals of Britain and other European countries to take in migrants they don’t want.
“The whole country is a prison,” Mr Rusesabagina said in the interview.
The re-emergence of Mr. Rusesabagina opens a new chapter in his and Mr. Kagame’s rivalrya once rebel leader who has ruled Rwanda for three decades.
Even if he Western donors attracted and propelled his nation forward in the aftermath of the genocide, Mr Kagame, 65, has tightened his grip by imprison critics, targeting opponents abroad and recently, clear his military leadership. For years he accused Mr. Rusesabagina of it making up the heroic story portrayed in “Hotel Rwanda.”
Timothy P. Longman, a Boston University professor and author of two books on Rwanda, said Mr. Rusesabagina “probably has more platform than anyone else,” due to his notoriety and the international attention to his case.
However, Mr Longman said in a telephone interview on Friday: “I am not optimistic for radical changes in Rwanda any time soon.”
Mr. Rusesabagina’s unlikely journey back to Rwanda began in mid-2019 when a lawyer friend, Innocent Twagiramungu, introduced him to a minister from Burundi, Constantin Niyomwungere.
The three met several times in Belgium, where Mr. Rusesabagina, a permanent resident of the US, has citizenship and another home. Mr Rusesabagina said the pastor wanted him to visit Burundi to talk to its churches about reconciliation and human rights.
Mr Niyomwungere could not be reached for comment. Mr. Twagiramungu did not reply to text messages.
But as plans for the trip began, Mr. Rusesabagina said he grew wary of the pastor.
He said the pastor had asked him to fly to Dubai and aboard a rented private jet only. Mr. Rusesabagina refused and insisted they fly together.
The pastor then told him not to tell his family where he was going. But Mr. Rusesabagina did it anyway, calling his wife first and then texting his daughter when he landed in Dubai. He promised to inform them when he landed in Burundi.
As they boarded the private jet, Mr Rusesabagina said he had asked the pilot and flight attendant separately about their final destination. Both said they were going to Burundi. (Mr Rusesabagina and his family are suing private airline GainJet, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
When the plane took off just before midnight Dubai time, he said he was offered a drink.
“I slept soundly,” said Mr. Rusesabagina. “I believe there was something in that glass of champagne.”
He woke up as the plane landed, he said, and caught a glimpse of Kigali’s familiar airport tower. “I just told myself this is the end of my life,” he said.
When security forces tied him up and he screamed for help, he said the crew was watching. “My principle is to suspect everyone, to never trust anyone,” he said. “But I fell for it anyway.”
In a trial that began soon after, Rwandan officials accused Mr Rusesabagina of leading an opposition coalition whose armed wing killed civilians in Rwanda, and planning to collaborate with other militant groups in neighboring Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Pastor Niyomwungere testified against Mr. Rusesabagina in court. That’s what the pastor said he agreed to serve as a government informant to avoid prosecution himself, and that he had come to deplore Mr. Rusesabagina’s alleged involvement in terrorist attacks.
In the interview, Mr. Rusesabagina said that he was no longer the head of the opposition coalition when he was detained. He also said that the coalition expelled the opposition political party that had an armed wing in June 2020 for failing to inform the coalition of its activities.
He had testified in court that he had given 20,000 euros to the armed group known as the National Liberation Front. In the interview, he said he agreed to say that only after he was tortured. “I just wanted to get out of prison,” he said.
The Rwandan government circulated as evidence against him a 2018 video in which Mr Rusesabagina proclaimed that change in Rwanda had to come by “any means possible”.
During his prison interview at The Times in 2020, Mr Rusesabagina said he couldn’t remember ever making such a video. This time, he acknowledged making that video, but said those words were taken out of context: “My principle is not to fight with weapons, but with words.”
said Mr. Rusesabagina he was denied his blood pressure and heart medication in prison and is kept in isolation for 23 hours a day. He was forbidden to talk to other prisoners, he said, although some had left him notes in the bathroom wishing him well. When a friend sent him a rosary blessed by Pope Francis, prison officials confiscated it; they returned it the night he was released, he said.
“Kagame says pressure can’t work against him,” he said. “But I know pressure worked. It’s not because of kindness that I’m out.
For now, Mr. Rusesabagina is trying to resume his normal life.
He attends physiotherapy sessions, receives visitors from all over the world and devours everything his wife, Taciana, cooks. (His favorite meal: a rare steak served with red wine.)
On an afternoon ride, driving through rolling terrain dotted with cacti and mesquite, Mr. Rusesabagina said he was happy to return to San Antonio — far away from the cool, green hills of Rwanda.
“San Antonio is home,” he said. “But it will never be Rwanda.”