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- [00:00]
Narrator/Host (99% Invisible)
A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a brand new podcast from 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. Each week we're looking at a different object from across American history with a unique story to tell about who we've been, what we've built, and what we've allowed ourselves to forget. Some of these objects are well known, many are not, but all of them carry the story of how we got to this moment. Find A History of the United States and 100 objects on the 99% invisible feed. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:32]
Robbie Grammer
The first four days of Paul Rosasobogino's imprisonment were some of the darkest days of his life. He was kept in isolation. Interrogators wanted him to confess to involvement in terrorism, and he says he was tortured. On the fourth day, Paul was brought to a police station in Kigali where a Rwandan official read out the charges against him.
- [00:54]
Paul Rusasibagina
He has been subject to of an international arrest warrant, wanted to answer charges of serious crime, including terrorism, financing terrorism, and related offenses against innocent Rwandan civilians.
- [01:09]
Robbie Grammer
For Paul's family members, it was a shock, but not just for them. Also for people around the world who knew something about Rwanda. Repressive regimes routinely target dissidents that's par for the course. But Paul was this human rights celebrity and he was a permanent resident in the United States.
- [01:29]
Kate Gibson
I remember seeing the headlines that he had been arrested and the sort of bravado of the Rwandan government of so openly kidnapping someone with such a high profile and someone who enjoyed the support of the US Government, it seemed like a very surprising move.
- [01:50]
Robbie Grammer
That's Kate Gibson. She's an international criminal lawyer based in Geneva who knows quite a lot about Rwanda's legal system.
- [01:58]
Kate Gibson
I've been working on cases in and around the rwandan genocide since 2005. When I started appearing on behalf of accused at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. And I've spent a lot of my professional career working in Rwanda and assisting on cases, training judges and lawyers in relation to these cases, which has been this sort of incredible privilege.
- [02:27]
Robbie Grammer
Paul's family began almost immediately talking to a lawyer in the United States about his situation, an expert in international law. But that attorney was up front with them. If they wanted someone really good, they should work with Kate. This is Paul's daughter, Anais.
- [02:43]
Anais Rusasibagina
He said that if he ever needed somebody to defend him, the first person he would ask would be Kate. And so he knew that she'd be very good. And she also knows the laws in Rwanda inside and out. And that's how she joined our team.
- [02:56]
Robbie Grammer
Kate understood enough about Rwanda to know that the criminal proceeding against Paul was not going to be a fair one. For one thing, non Rwandan lawyers need a special permit to work in the country, which Paul's legal team would be denied. So that was one problem. But in every other aspect of the case as well, the government was sure to put its thumb on the scale.
- [03:17]
Kate Gibson
Paul was charged with nine counts that were essentially terrorism related. So forming a terrorist group, funding a terrorist group, being part of a terrorist group, there's no credible evidence that would support these kind of charges being brought.
- [03:35]
Robbie Grammer
So the strategy for getting Paul freed would have to be broader than just the case in Rwanda. It would have to include political pressure on Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, financial leverage against the country itself, and most importantly, it would have to involve the United States, whose relationship with Rwanda was incredibly important to Kagame. Welcome to After Hotel Rwanda, a special series from Foreign Policy about the arrest of Paul Rusasa Baguina and the incredible effort it took to get him released. I'm Robbie Grammer. I'm a national security reporter at Foreign Policy magazine. Today, Part three, the Campaign. In our earlier episodes, we looked at how Paul was tricked into boarding a private plane that he thought was bound for Burundi and ended up in a Rwandan prison. And we talked about the country's bloody history, including the 1994 genocide and how it came to define Paul's life. Today, we pick up the story. In 2020, in his prison cell in Kigali, Paul was trying to process the fact that he was now a prisoner of his nemesis, Paul Kagame, and that he might spend the rest of his life behind bars. Elsewhere in the world, Paul's family members were trying to come up with a strategy. It would begin by focusing people's attention on the way he was lured to Rwanda. Kagame touted it as a major victory for the country, a legitimate operation against a suspected terrorist. Here's Kagame speaking at a press conference a little more than a week after Paul's arrest.
- [05:19]
Paul Rusasibagina
There was no kidnap, there was no any wrongdoing in the process of his getting here.
- [05:27]
Robbie Grammer
And this is part of my conversation with Yolanda McCullough, a spokeswoman for the Rwandan government. Why detain Paul in this way? Because by any definition, you hear from human rights groups, international legal observers, that that effectively amounts to kidnapping.
- [05:42]
Yolanda McCullough
It doesn't, because no laws were broken. You're suspected of very serious crimes. No international laws were were violated in his arrest. I mean, when there's a criminal at large that has harmed several civilians, has killed people. The priority is really to. To bring that person to justice in a lawful way, which is what we did. I mean, extradition would be one way. I don't think we have an extradition treaty with the. With the US for instance, but we did what worked.
- [06:16]
Robbie Grammer
The Rwandan spokesperson is actually right about this, at least in one respect. There is no formal extradition treaty between the United States and Rwanda. A number of countries have orchestrated the capture of people abroad suspected of crimes or terrorism, including the United States. But that practice violates existing international law, even if the person in question is suspected of a crime. In any case, for Rwandan officials, focusing on the abduction was a distraction. The real issue was Paul's involvement with a militant group, the National Liberation Front, or fln.
- [06:54]
Yolanda McCullough
He was suspected of being behind the FLN militia that had carried out attacks, several attacks, in Rwanda in 2018. So he was charged with being the leader of this militia, of fundraising for it, and basically commanding this armed group of his political party.
- [07:15]
Robbie Grammer
The FLN is a militia group affiliated with the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change, a political opposition group formed in exile. Some people refer to this group by the French initials mrcd. The FLN has, in fact, claimed responsibility for at least two attacks on civilians in Rwanda. The mrcd, though, denies any responsibility for these attacks.
- [07:39]
Yolanda McCullough
I mean, the evidence showed that not only he raised thousands of euros for the fln, but he gave direct orders on what they should do. He even talked about it publicly on media and bragged about it.
- [07:53]
Paul Rusasibagina
The time has come for us to use any means possible to bring about change in Rwanda. As all political means have been tried and failed, it is time to attempt our last resort.
- [08:09]
Robbie Grammer
That's Paul in a talk he gave sometime before his abduction. You can hear him saying, any means possible to bring about change in Rwanda. It's the kind of language that could be interpreted as a call to arms. In our interview, I asked Paul specifically about those words.
- [08:28]
Paul Rusasibagina
This is what people did not understand. But that is a Rwandan way of saying things. If you listen to me, you will see that I talk in proverbs. I talk in such a kind of language that is just a Rwandan way of saying things.
- [08:46]
Robbie Grammer
And you disavow the violence?
- [08:48]
Paul Rusasibagina
No, I did not talk about violence. Just it is a Rwandan way of saying things.
- [08:53]
Narrator/Host (99% Invisible)
Paul Rusasibagina publicly aligned himself with groups that carried out attacks against civilians.
- [09:00]
Robbie Grammer
This is Louis Mudge from Human Rights Watch. He's the group's Central Africa director and lived in Rwanda for years.
- [09:07]
Narrator/Host (99% Invisible)
You know, that doesn't mean that his arrest was justified, but that's a fact. And so, like many things in Rwanda, I don't think that the case of Paul Rusisabagina, now in 2024, is Black and white and clear cut. I think it's shaped shades of gray.
- [09:27]
Robbie Grammer
So this would be the key question in his trial. Was Paul advocating for attacks against Rwandans in order to undermine Kagame's regime, or was he simply supporting a political group in exile but didn't play a role in any violence? Paul's trial got underway a few months after his abduction. It didn't start well. Paul says he was given access to the evidence collected against him just a few days before the hearing. By his estimate, it ran to more than 30,000 pages.
- [10:01]
Paul Rusasibagina
I told the judges that, listen, ladies and gentlemen, I'm ready to defend myself, but I have a huge fire which has got thousands and thousands of of pages to be read. Give me at least six months so that I can sit down and read and understand.
- [10:29]
Robbie Grammer
Paul wanted a delay in the proceedings to sift through the mountain of supposed evidence. He also wanted the court to recognize that he had been brought to Rwanda illegally abducted. Both requests were long shots, but the judges agreed to deliberate. They came back a few hours later with a decision. The trial would continue, no delay. So Paul did something desperate to try and shake things up in a trial he saw as wholly unfair.
- [11:01]
Paul Rusasibagina
That is when I raised my hand and I said, listen, sir, I have come to this Quran expecting justice. Now I can see that there is no justice. So since there is no justice, I am pulling out.
- [11:18]
Robbie Grammer
Paul would be boycotting his own trial.
- [11:21]
Paul Rusasibagina
They started looking at each other. They could not understand what was going on because so far, nobody had dared to pull out from a trial. And I told them, listen, would you please do me a favor and take me back to prison? They couldn't believe it.
- [11:40]
Robbie Grammer
The hearing started in February 2021. They dragged on for months. Evidence was presented, witnesses were heard, including the bishop who befriended Paul and lured him to Rwanda. All this was done in Paul's absence.
- [11:55]
Yolanda McCullough
We did everything by the book.
- [11:57]
Robbie Grammer
That's Yolanda Makolo again, the spokeswoman for the Rwandan government.
- [12:02]
Yolanda McCullough
It was a trial that happened in open court. We had journalists and diplomats attending. It was available on YouTube, and we even paid for interpretation in three languages.
- [12:14]
Robbie Grammer
But for Paul and his team, as well as outside independent legal experts, the trial was anything but by the book. They say basic defendant rights were withheld from Paul. Non Rwandan lawyers representing him were denied permission to appear in court. When one of them traveled to Rwanda anyway, the government promptly deported him. This is Kate Gibson.
- [12:36]
Kate Gibson
You know, I can sit here and tell you that it was a miscarry of justice and an absolute farce, but I have other people, other independent international monitors who say the same thing. And we could just see, as trial day after trial day passed, just this sort of systematic violation of Paul's rights as an accused.
- [12:56]
Robbie Grammer
The Clooney foundation for Justice, a legal human rights advocacy organization, assigned lawyers to monitor Paul's trial, start to finish. According to the group's report, prosecutors failed to make the case that Paul directed terrorism rather than just taking part in the political activities of an opposition group. The report concluded that the proceedings violated international and regional standards in some parts and smacked of a show trial. The foundation assigns a grade A to F to each case it assesses for how much it complies with international legal standards. It gave Paul's trial a D. In September of 2021, about a year after the abduction, the court returned a verdict. Paul Rusessa Baggina was found guilty of of being a member of a terrorist group and committing terrorist acts. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for allegedly supporting a rebel group that carried out deadly attacks in Rwanda in 2018 and 2019. Rusasa Baguina is a longtime critic of
- [14:05]
Anais Rusasibagina
Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
- [14:11]
Robbie Grammer
This is Kate Gibson again.
- [14:13]
Kate Gibson
When it became clear that we weren't going to be able to defend Paul in the courtroom, we had to sort of completely shift our strategy and try and think of other legal levers that we could push and pull to try and secure his release. And that had to fit into a sort of larger overall strategy that we had with the team and the family to try and get him home.
- [14:40]
Robbie Grammer
More after the break. Back in the United States, Paul Rusessa Begina's trial captured the attention of officials and policymakers. But not all of them were on Paul's side. Kagame, during his long years in office, had made some powerful friends in Washington. African leaders are increasingly looking to Rwanda and Kagame for vision of how to move forward into the future. The Rwanda model is becoming a hallmark phrase in Africa. That's Oklahoma's then Republican Senator, Jim Inhofe speaking on the senate floor in 2018. Kate's team wanted to find American officials who would champion Paul's case. But Kate was from Australia. She'd worked in Africa and elsewhere. What she needed was an insider in Washington.
- [15:45]
Ryan Fahey
Most of my career still today has been with the U.S. department of Justice.
- [15:49]
Robbie Grammer
That's Ryan Fahey. He worked for over a decade at the US Justice Department on complex national security investigations. Cases that covered sanctions, evasions, cybercrime, even espionage. In Washington, he was a consummate insider. Ryan was now in private practice. He dealt mostly with government regulatory law and compliance. But his real passion was helping families of Americans detained abroad.
- [16:17]
Ryan Fahey
I knew I wanted to have a robust pro bono practice. I knew that I wanted it to focus on the role of victims. I just thought it was an interesting role that I could be good at.
- [16:29]
Robbie Grammer
Ryan had become involved with a group that supports Americans whose families were wrongfully detained in other countries. That group had been in touch with the Resasa Baguinas and made the introduction.
- [16:40]
Ryan Fahey
I came to it interestingly as somebody who knew almost nothing about Rwanda beyond having seen Hotel Rwanda, the movie. And of course, I had known of the 1994 genocide that plays a role in that movie. But the layers of complexity that I now have come to appreciate involving the US relationship with Rwanda, the Rwandan government's relationship with its own people and the rest of the world, I had not any appreciation for at that time.
- [17:15]
Kate Gibson
He really started to help us negotiate this world of Washington D.C. you know, I'm a criminal lawyer, I know a bit about Rwanda, but I don't know how the Hill works or how you can engage the House or weaponise the Senate. And Ryan knows all those things. And he told us really early on that the key to Washington is trying to find a way that people can act in their own interests by helping you. Which I just remember thinking was so cynical at the time. But of course, you know, he was right.
- [17:55]
Robbie Grammer
So Ryan came up with a Washington playbook. It involved reaching out to people at the State Department, people in the White House, members of the media, and also to this guy.
- [18:06]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
My name is John Tomashewski and I'm a senior professional staff member on the Senate Farm Relations Committee. I work for a ranking member. Jim Risch.
- [18:16]
Robbie Grammer
Tomashevsky is an expert on African affairs for the Republican side. Everyone calls him J.T. by the way, so we will too. His job description, Senate staffer doesn't quite do it justice for people unfamiliar with the way Washington works. Congressional staffers wield a lot of behind the scenes power. They help draft and craft laws and policies that members of Congress then take up themselves. They do the day to day job of making Congress run. JT had been following Paul's ordeal even before hearing from Ryan, and he concluded that getting Paul released would require some very delicate maneuvering.
- [18:57]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
Some people obviously wanted us to just go in and get Paul or just sanction the hell out of the country and beat the government in submission. But that clearly wasn't the most productive way to get to something here because at the end of the day, we have a very complex relationship with Rwanda. Security relationship, economic relationship. We're doing stuff there that we have other interests. And part of the calculation that had to be made was, are you of the view that the US Government would completely nuke its relationship with the Rwandan government to get Paul out? I did not draw that conclusion.
- [19:33]
Robbie Grammer
Kagame was a polarizing figure in the US Policy world. More than most foreign leaders, his regime quashed political dissent and flouted international human rights norms. Kagame's military had fomented instability in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo the through proxy rebel groups. As a result, some in Washington argued that the United States should seriously reassess its ties with Rwanda. But others saw him as a leader who had stabilized Rwanda after the genocide in 1994, at a time when world powers had turned away, who participated in counterterrorism operations on the continent over the years and contributed troops to UN peacekeeping operations.
- [20:17]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
People were finding people in Congress on the Recessabiyina camp who were just looking for people who hated Kagame and sort of hated the regime. And that was an easy way to get support. Then the other side, there were senators and there were congressmen who had had long relationships with President Kagame's government and have visited there multiple times. And they're like, nah, man, this guy's a terrorist.
- [20:39]
Robbie Grammer
This guy, meaning Paul Rsazibagina. JT says Ryan Fahey, the lawyer, suggested a strategy that would bypass these broader questions about Rwanda and Kagame and even the question of Paul's guilt or innocence. The message to U.S. lawmakers would be Paul Rusasabagino was a permanent legal resident of the United States. He had been detained under questionable, possibly illegal circumstances, and his trial was clearly unfair.
- [21:09]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
I tried not to get into those different debates, but just focus on Paul and, you know, Ryan really brought that to the table in a way that I had not seen previously. He may not be at that time an unawfully detained person. He may not be a US Citizen per se. He may not even be innocent, as some of you may have view. Have that view. But clearly Congress cares. And if this issue isn't managed properly, you're going to have a bigger problem. And frankly, the Rwandan government's got a bigger problem.
- [21:45]
Robbie Grammer
JT says the narrow issue of Paul's imprisonment began resonating with people in Congress. Some were drafting letters and getting signatures. Others were pressing the State Department to be more active, more assertive with Rwanda. By now, Ryan and JT Were having weekly calls with Paul's daughters, Karine and Anais, and they were reaching out to the Rwandan embassy to begin a dialogue.
- [22:08]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
Ryan was like, yeah, I'd love to meet someone from the embassy for coffee informally, off the books, just to kind of like, you know, exchange. And I had received similar willingness to like, hey, yeah, I'll listen what the lawyer has to say, what the recessive unit lawyer has to say, like. And so I made an introduction.
- [22:26]
Robbie Grammer
The effort started to pay off. In prison, Paul was being allowed weekly calls with his family. Five minutes every Friday, and he was allowed a visitor from Washington, none other than J.T. the Senate staffer.
- [22:41]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
It was surreal, right? Because here, I mean, I'm a congressional staffer who works on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee dealing with, like, budgets and sanctions and all kinds of other stuff that we deal with on the Hill and legislation. And here I am sitting in a prison on a staff delegation by myself, one of the first US Officials outside of the consular to sit with Paul. Obviously, they had, you know, maybe made a few improvements because you could smell some fresh paint.
- [23:09]
Robbie Grammer
For Paul's family, the progress was encouraging, but it wasn't consistent. Paul's daughters on ice and Karine had put their careers on hold so that they could advocate on their father's behalf all the time. Karine recalls having to deal with some new crisis almost every day.
- [23:26]
Anais Rusasibagina
Something needed to be done at every moment, whether he was held in solitary. Then we couldn't sleep knowing that he was still in a small room alone in the dark. His medication were taken away from him or they would stop giving him his medication. So we needed to figure out how to get his medication back to him. So every day, every. Almost every hour, there was some update, some news, some action. Something had happened, and we both needed to extinguish the fire that had just been lit by the Rwandan government. Somewhere in the cell at the prison,
- [23:59]
Robbie Grammer
at the hospital, those little fires being lit by the Rwandan government were also directed at Paul's family members. Weird little incidents that threw them off balance. Tresor, during one of his zoom meetings to try to rally support for his father, realized that a stranger was on the call with his camera off. The other people were all students and faculty at St. Mary's University, where Tresor studied. Someone on the call asked the stranger to identify himself.
- [24:27]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
So she's like, whoever's window. We can't see why. Why are you not showing your face?
- [24:32]
Paul Rusasibagina
Who are you?
- [24:32]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
And then all of a sudden we hear this noise, like, like somebody shuffling paper or like finishing a sandwich or something. Like they were comfortable, didn't know that they were going to get called out. And now all of a sudden they're moving to, like, click off, and then, boom, window, you know, disappears.
- [24:47]
Robbie Grammer
The incident was weird enough for the IT department at the university to trace the person through his Internet address. It turned out to be an official at the Rwandan embassy in Washington. A few months later, Karine came to learn that her cell phone had been hacked.
- [25:05]
Anais Rusasibagina
So I found out when a collective of journalists called Forbidden Stories contacted me. They had heard that the Rwandan government uses the spyware to target activists, political opposition, and journalists. And so they asked to come to my home in Belgium and to talk at first, and I was very scared because we were not trusting many people given what had just happened to my father. But after they were able to convince me and came to the house and asked to look into my phone and to do an analysis of the phone,
- [25:44]
Robbie Grammer
the team, which included researchers from the Canadian human rights and Internet freedom advocacy group Citizen Lab, discovered that Karine's phone had been infected with spyware known as Pegasus. Originally manufactured in Israel and sold to various regimes around the world. Pegasus not only scoops up all the information on your phone, it also turns it into a surveillance device against you. The tech people told Karine that the spyware had been active during the family's meetings with various government officials, including the Belgian foreign minister. I asked Yolanda Mukullo about this, the Rwandan government spokeswoman.
- [26:22]
Yolanda McCullough
We have been very clear about this. Rwanda does not own, does not use this software. We don't. It's something that they made up. I don't know why you maybe talk to them about it. It's something that we do not use. Yes, we have intelligence like every other country has. We have mostly human intelligence. We intelligence, actually. So we do not use Pegasus. We don't know where this accusation came from, and it's ridiculous. We didn't need it. We had enough.
- [26:52]
Robbie Grammer
Karina and Anais were also facing waves of online harassment from supporters of the Rwandan government, including death threats. They said it began to affect them psychologically, but Yolanda downplayed that in our interview.
- [27:05]
Yolanda McCullough
I think Paul's family complained a lot about many other things, but it's nothing compared to the suffering of the families that lost their loved ones in the attacks that Paul Ruse Sabagina's militia carried out in southern Rwanda. He killed up to 13 people, I think, including two children. So if they feel that people are not being nice to them on social media, I mean, these are real people with real stories. They had real lives that were shuttered.
- [27:35]
Kate Gibson
The response of the Rwandan government to criticism on social media is extremely effective and widespread.
- [27:43]
Robbie Grammer
This is Paul's lawyer again, Kate Gibson.
- [27:46]
Kate Gibson
I mean, we've heard stories of brigades in Kigali, of people who sit there and it's their job that when someone mentions Rusa Sevagina in a positive light, they are required to immediately hit back and accuse the person doing the posting of terrorism, racism, genocide, denial. A lot of the attacks that I experienced on social media representing Paul were threatening. A lot of them were gendered. A lot of them mentioned my kids. I got to the point where I just started blocking people who would send me threats on social media. And I think I've blocked over 600 people. So this is significant online trolling and abuse. What I suffered doesn't come anywhere near to what the family members themselves were putting up with on a daily basis. One person who advocates loudly on behalf of the Rwandan government one day posted a tweet saying he would like to welcome Karine back to Kigali with a golden machete, which was sort of my tipping point, I think.
- [29:10]
Robbie Grammer
I searched for that tweet on the platform now known as X and found was posted by a person who identifies himself as a Rwandan genocide scholar. He has tens of thousands of followers. By early 2022, Team RCESA Baguina was pushing on three main political pressure from Washington, criticism of the Rwandan government from human rights groups, and a new tactic aimed squarely at Rwanda's bank accounts.
- [29:43]
Kate Gibson
We, you know, sued Rwanda for $400 million in the district courts in D.C. we sued Gainjet, which was the airline company that took part in the kidnapping. We brought a criminal complaint in Belgium for kidnapping. We sued Rwanda in front of the East African Court of Justice. We brought a complaint in front of the UN Special Rapporteur for torture. Pulling all these different sorts of legal levers allowed us to try and continue to make his detention uncomfortable for the Rwandan government, but also allowed us to get these sort of concrete findings about the illegality of his detention that we hoped would make it easier for the US Government to then act.
- [30:31]
Robbie Grammer
The multi pronged strategy was meant to convince Kagame that continuing to hold Paul in prison would exact a price. Price that releasing Paul was actually a better option than holding on to him a way out from all this trouble. And then in May 2022, 19 months after the abduction, a breakthrough for Team Recessa Bagina. The State Department declared that Paul had been unlawfully detained. The official statement said the decision did not imply any position on Paul's innocence or guilt, but it took into account the totality of the circumstances, notably the lack of fair trial guarantees during his trial. Wrongfully detained is actually an official legal designation, one that starts up a totally new type of machinery in Washington's foreign policy institutions, giving Paul access to the power and resources of a dedicated senior official in charge of hostage affairs. It raised the issue's political profile and sent a strong message on where the US stood on Paul's detention. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered that message to Kagame personally.
- [31:40]
Kate Gibson
Antony Blinken had a list of tough
- [31:42]
Robbie Grammer
topics to discuss in a visit to Kigali a few months later. Notably what Washington calls a lack of
- [31:49]
Kate Gibson
fair trial guarantees for so called Hotel Rwanda hero and US resident Paul Rucesesa Bagina.
- [31:57]
Robbie Grammer
In the flurry of all this diplomacy, the lawsuits, the political pressure, the beginning of a compromise was coming together or a proposal at least. If Paul was willing to write a letter requesting a pardon, if it included some admission of guilt and some promise not to operate against the Rwandan government in the future, would Kagame be willing to release him?
- [32:18]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
I had an opportunity to have an informal meeting with some, with some Rwandan officials in Kigali and basically said to them, listen, the family has come to the conclusion that they would be supportive of Paul exploring a pardon letter to explore that process. And I think the officials that I was meeting with at the time were kind of like really, the family that's suing us in court, the family that is saying all these things on social media and the press about us, they're open to Paul, you know, looking at this, they're supportive. To hear that, for me, I think made an impact.
- [32:55]
Robbie Grammer
Paul Rusessabagina was becoming a headache for the regime. For the first time on ice and Karine were picking up signals that Kagame might actually be willing to do a deal. And then a reversal that made it seem like they were back to square one. At a summit for African leaders in Washington, and in late 2022, Kagame was asked about Paul's imprisonment and the American pressure to release him.
- [33:22]
John Tomashewski (J.T.)
So is Blinken's advocacy and determination of, of him being wrongly detained helping his case or hurting his case?
- [33:31]
Paul Rusasibagina
I think from what I have said, you can conclude. Because we've made it clear there isn't anybody going to come from anywhere to bully us into something to do with our lives.
- [33:56]
Robbie Grammer
Next time on After Hotel Rwanda. A final push and a homecoming. After Hotel Rwanda is a production of Foreign Policy. Our series is produced by Rob Sachs and edited by Dan Efron. FP's audio production staff includes Laura Rosbroughtellem, Rosie Julin and Claudia Tate. For more about Paul's story, check out foreignpolicy.com we'll have an accompanying article there with more details on the story. And if you like what you're hearing, listeners to this series can get a 15% discount on a subscription to Foreign Policy magazine. Go to the website and and enter the code. Ispy. I'm Robby Grammer. Thanks for listening.