By John Ikani
An appeal court in Rwanda has upheld the 25 year-prison sentence of Paul Rusesabagina as it declared him guilty on terror charges.
A fierce outspoken critic of President Paul Kagame, Rusesabagina has been in custody for almost 600 days.
He was convicted in March 2021 after a trial his family and supporters branded a sham that was plagued with irregularities.
Since then, the subject of the Hollywood movie about the Rwandan genocide – ‘Hotel Rwanda’ has boycotted court proceedings.
Prosecutors had during the appeal sought to increase the penalty to life imprisonment, a move that was dismissed by judge Francois Regis Rukundakuvuga.
“Since he is a first time offender, the court finds that his sentence should not be increased, because the 25 years he was given is in accordance with the weight of his crimes, and the court maintains his sentence,” said judge Rukundakuvuga.
Rusesabagina is credited with saving more than 1,200 lives during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which 800,000 mostly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus were slaughtered.
He worked as the manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali and helped shelter Hutu and Tutsi refugees there during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
But, in the years after Hollywood made him an international celebrity, a more complex image emerged of a staunch government critic whose tirades against Kagame led him to be treated as an enemy of the state.
The 67-year-old was arrested in August 2020 after what he described as kidnapping from Dubai by Rwandan authorities.
He was accused of supporting an armed wing of his opposition political platform, the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change. The group had claimed some responsibility for attacks in 2018 and 2019 in the south of the country in which nine Rwandans died.
