Rwanda / Genocide Rescuers

"Hotel Rwanda" Hero Implicated in Terror Case
By Kezio-Musoke David
Reuters dispatch on MSNBC.com, October 27, 2010
Photo: "Paul Rusesabagina, former Rwandan hotel manager, arrives at 'Save Darfur: Rally To Stop Genocide' in Washington, DC in 2006." (Nancy Ostertag/Getty Images)
"Paul Rusesabagina, the man who saved more than 1,200 people from genocide in events depicted in the Oscar-nominated film 'Hotel Rwanda,' has been implicated in the terrorism case against a Rwandan opposition leader. Martin Ngoga, Rwanda's prosecutor general, told Reuters on Wednesday that Rwandan courts would summon Rusesabagina because investigations indicated he also funded the terrorism activities that opposition leader Victoire Ingabire is being held for. Ingabire, the outspoken head of the unregistered United Democratic Forces (UDF) party, was arrested by Rwandan police on October 14 after they said investigations into a former FDLR rebel commander facing terrorism charges also implicated her. She pleaded not guilty at a hearing Monday and was denied bail Tuesday after a court said the charges against her were of a serious nature. Ingabire says the case against her is politically motivated.
'We have evidence that Paul Rusesabagina is one of those others who have been financing the same genocidal rebels of the FDLR,' Ngoga said. 'We have the dates of transactions made. Money was sent from San Antonio, Texas, and received in different banks in Bujumbura and Dar es Salaam. The people who received this money told us what the money was for,' he said. Rusesabagina, whose true-life story was acted by award-winning actor Don Cheadle, lives in the United States and tours Western countries lecturing on Rwanda's 1994 genocide. He is an outspoken critic of President Paul Kagame, saying an ethnic Tutsi elite now runs the central African country and risks reigniting violence there. Earlier this month, he welcomed the publication of a United Nations report that said Kagame's troops carried out atrocities in Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 1990s. [...]"