Blinken maintains Hotel Rwanda hero’s trial was 'unfair'

KIGALI, Rwanda

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said he had discussed with Rwanda's president about the trial and imprisonment of dissident Paul Rusesabagina, who was portrayed as a hero in the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda, maintaining that his trial was “unfair.”

Rusesabagina, 67, was last September convicted on eight of nine counts.

The conviction was related to acts of terrorism committed by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in 2018 which claimed the lives of nine civilians in Rwanda’s southwest.

Rwandan appeals court in April upheld 25 years in prison for Rusesabagina following an appeal by prosecution.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta in the capital Kigali, Blinken said he had discussed the case with President Paul Kagame and the US will continue to engage and also follow up with the family.

“We have been clear about our position with the trial of Paul Rusesabagina. We still have conviction that the trial wasn’t fair,” he said without divulging the details following his meeting with the Rwandan leader. The US had in May indicated that he had been wrongfully detained.

But Biruta said Rusesabagina, a US permanent resident, was “tried and convicted for serious crimes committed against Rwandan citizens.” “This was done lawfully under both Rwandan and international laws,” he said.

Rusesabagina inspired the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, in which as a hotelier he is depicted as having sheltered people during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

But IBUKA, an umbrella body of genocide survivors' associations of Rwanda, said he had exaggerated his own role in helping hotel refugees escape the massacre.

Blinken, who was on the last leg of his three-nation Africa tour, earlier visited Kigali genocide memorial site, where he laid a wreath at the mass graves in honor of about 1 million victims of Rwanda's 1994 genocide against Tutsi ethnic group.

He said he had been “profoundly moved by the memorial and inspired by the resilience of the survivors and the remarkable progress of this country.”

“My family experienced the horrors of holocaust and I appreciate the importance of memorializing such tragic events. The United States strongly supports Rwanda’s continued efforts towards renewal and national reconciliation,” Blinken wrote in a guest book at the memorial.

On M23 rebels fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Blinken said he had told Kagame that the recent UN report accusing Rwanda of backing the M23 rebels is “credible.”

Rwanda denies the allegations and has dismissed the report by UN experts as a move “to distract from real issues.”

The US top diplomat said any support of any armed group in eastern Congo “endangers local communities and regional stability and every country in the region must respect the territorial integrity of the others.”

Blinken started his visit in South Africa before heading to the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier in the week.