'Hotel Rwanda' Hero Paul Rusesabagina to Be Released

Voice of America
24 Mar 2023, 23:35 GMT+10

The Rwandan government has commuted the prison sentence of Paul Rusesabagina nearly three years after he was captured and detained.

Rusesabagina, once a hotel manager in Rwanda's capital Kigali, is credited with saving hundreds of lives during the country's 1994 genocide. His actions inspired the Hollywood film 'Hotel Rwanda.'

A statement Friday from the Rwandan Ministry of Justice said sentences for several individuals, including Rusesabagina, 'have been commuted by presidential order after consideration of their requests for clemency.'

The 68-year-old Rwandan hotelier-turned-dissident has been jailed in Rwanda since August 2020, when a plane he believed was headed for Burundi instead landed in Kigali.

After he left the plane, he was tried and convicted on a slew of terrorism-related charges the following year, over his ties to an organization opposed to President Paul Kagame's rule.

Rusesabagina has U.S. permanent residency rights, and the U.S. government has described him as 'wrongly detained,' in part because of what it called the lack of fair trial guarantees.

According to media reports, Rwanda government spokesperson Stephanie Nyombayire confirmed to ABC News that Rusesabagina would be released from prison within 24 hours.

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