And he picked up numerous awards along the way, including the U. Presidential Medal of Freedom in , the highest civilian honor given by the American president. Since fleeing his homeland, Rusesabagina also became an outspoken critic of the Rwandan government. In his book, Rusesabagina condemned Kagame's Rwanda as "a nation governed by and for the benefit of a small group of elite Tutsis. The Rwandan government hit back. Just months after the film's debut, Kagame called Rusesabagina a "manufactured hero.
A Rwandan prosecutor repeated the claim in , saying he had evidence that Rusesabagina wired large sums of money to rebel commanders. Rusesabagina relocated his family to San Antonio, Texas, in , after assassination attempts and several break-ins at their home just outside Brussels.
In May , Rwanda's National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, an ostensibly independent body, published a report about "what really took place at the Hotel des Mille Collines," featuring dozens of testimonies from genocide survivors who accused Rusesabagina of exaggerating his role in saving the refugees or even profiting from it.
ABC News spoke with some of the survivors who have come out against Rusesabagina. One of them, Wellars "Zozo" Bizumuremyi, said he worked with Rusesabagina as the hotel's concierge. Pearson said he spent about four years researching the Rwandan genocide and what took place at the Hotel des Mille Collines prior to making the movie, interviewing survivors for "countless hours.
Rusesabagina didn't tell his family that he was planning to fly to Burundi from Dubai last August. But one of his daughters, who helped book his flights to and from Dubai, said that wasn't unusual.
There had been assassination attempts, they had broken into our home, we knew that they had bugged his phone and were tracking him. When Rusesabagina arrived in the emirate on the evening of Aug. He then met up with Constantin Niyomwungere, a Burundi-born pastor who Rusesabagina alleged had invited him to speak at churches in Burundi about his experience during the Rwandan genocide. Later that night, the pair hopped on a private jet that Rusesabagina believed would take them to Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, according to Rusesabagina's international legal team.
Rusesabagina didn't know that the pastor was working as an informant for the Rwanda Investigation Bureau and had tricked him into boarding a chartered flight to Kigali. Rwandan prosecutors alleged that Rusesabagina wanted to go to Burundi to coordinate with rebel groups based there and in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rusesabagina told the court that after arriving in Kigali early on Aug. Rusesabagina's attorneys have accused Rwandan authorities of kidnapping him and bringing him to the country illegally.
If they had a real case against him, they would have had him extradited. In , he left Belgium, where he had settled with his family, for the US after his home was burgled several times and important documents were stolen. His journey to pariah status began after the film Hotel Rwanda was released in Rusesabagina's story had remained largely unknown for a decade, while he worked as a taxi driver in the Belgian capital, Brussels.
It was featured in a section of journalist Philip Gourevitch's book about the genocide, but it was the Hollywood movie, where he was played by Don Cheadle, that brought him global attention. The movie's premiere in his home country was in front of 10, people in a stadium in the capital, Kigali, which Rusesabagina was expected to attend.
But he never travelled to Rwanda. The official explanation was that he was unwell but the screening came at a time when he was saying that Hutus were now being targeted by the Tutsi-led government. In it he described his early life in rural Rwanda in idyllic terms. He was one of nine children from a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother.
He went on to talk about what happened during the genocide, but there was a sting in the tail. Towards the end, he described President Kagame as the "classic African strongman" adding that "the popular image persists that Rwanda is today a nation governed by and for the benefit of a small group of elite Tutsis".
His prescription at the time, for the man who loved the power of words, was talking and he urged dialogue to help sort the country's problems out.
But Rusesabagina's reputation in Rwanda was crumbling. The state-run media started criticising him and Mr Kagame called him a "manufactured hero" in what some saw as a deliberate attempt to destroy the reputation of someone who dared to challenge him.
Some of the survivors began to contradict Rusesabagina's account. In exile, he became more outspoken about what he saw as the targeting of Hutus. His backers have described him as a human rights defender calling out an oppressive government. In , Rusesabagina said a UN-backed war crimes court should put some members of Mr Kagame's party on trial for their alleged role in the genocide.
In a speech at the University of Michigan, he said that proxy groups operating on behalf of the Rwandan government had killed hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A UN report had revealed some of the details, but the Rwandan government rejected it, calling it "flawed and dangerous".
Paul Rusesabagina mysteriously "disappeared" from Dubai in late August, only to surface in the Rwandan capital of Kigali a few days later, handcuffed and slapped with terrorism charges.
The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
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