Terror suspect Paul Rusesabagina’s defenses unravel, falling apart one by one.
His claims that he was “kidnapped” have been demolished, and hold no water. He was lured by a sophisticated law enforcement operation that broke no laws.
His claims that he is “a Belgian citizen” (therefore can’t be tried in Rwanda) have been laughed out of court. And even if he never was a Rwandan his crimes are squarely within the jurisdiction of Rwandan law enforcement.
Neither can Hollywood fictions that he is “a hero” be a pretext to excuse Rusesabagina’s terrorism.
The man is stymied. His apologists are stymied.
So, the latest ploy of his PR team – headed by one Kitty Kurth, of which Rusesabagina’s adopted daughter Carine Kanimba is the most vocal member – is to invent scenarios whereby Rwanda supposedly is planning to kill Rusesabagina.
In a blog posted at the start of this month on her “PRLog” blog site, Kurth claims: “Rwanda is planning to kill Rusesabagina, then announce he was trying to escape.”Kurth falsely uses a comment by Rwandan Justice Minister Johnston Busingye – in which the minister disclosed that “there was a particular document (which came from a child of Rusesabagina) which actually suggested escape” – to make this claim.
Busingye had only specified that Rusesabagina’s people were engaged on the possibility of getting him to escape, nothing more than that.
Even then, an attempt to escape prison would be nothing new. Just as one example, in 2017 someone assisted criminal convict Cassien Ntamuhanga, a terrorist that was serving time in Mpanga Prison, escape in 2017. There have been other cases when anti-Rwanda groups have planned prison break for similarly convicted individuals.
But Kurth in her blog chooses to twist the minister’s words. “Busingye’s comment about the escape plan is troubling because this is a common way in which the Rwandan Government commits extra-judicial murders of prisoners,” she writes.
These people have run out of even half credible lies.
The contradiction in what Kurth claims Rwanda does, and what Rwanda actually does is a glaring one.
Rwanda is a country of rule of law and does things by the law. In the case of Rusesabagina, Kigali has succeeded in making him answerable for his crimes – which he himself openly boasted about on video, and in audio recordings. He is being tried by a capable and independent judiciary. The Rwandan Government did not resort to an extra-judicialcrime to deal with the man, contrary to all the allegations of his apologists.
Anyone after the truth would ask about people like Deo Mushayidi, Victoire Ingabire, LaForge Fils Bazeye, Theophile “Abega” Kamara, Maj. (Rtd.) Habib Mudathir, Callixte Nsabimana “Sankara” (one of Rusesabagina’s henchmen), and others. They all were lawfully arrested, at different times. And they all got their day in court. They defended themselves publicly, and exhaustively.
In short everything about how Rwanda handles suspects, in even the highest, most treasonous cases, is by the book.
The Rusesabagina PR team’s wild claims of plans to assassinate him fall flat in the face of this evidence.
In her piece, Kitty Kurth uses a tendentious “gotcha” interview of Busingye by al Jazeera to claim: “it actually is the Rwandan government that has been actively involved in setting up this scenario (of a plan by Rusesabagina to escape).”
But how did she learn this? It was Carine Kanimba who said it, the reader is told.
“Carine has been receiving voice recordings and text messages from Hamiss Mjinya who claims to be one of Mr. Rusesabagina’s prison guards in Kigali.” The story further claims that in these messages, ‘Mjinya’ told Carine that ‘”the only way to avoid Rusesabagina spending the rest of his life in prison is for him to escape.”
The implication of this story is that “had Carine agreed to this plan, this Mjinya would have enticed Rusesabagina to try to escape, after which prison guards would shoot himand say he had been escaping!”
These are all merely amateurish fictions cooked up by desperate people whose options dwindle by the day. Rusesabagina’s team most probably got this idea after watching the al Jazeera interview.
A sure sign that it is a mere concoction of a story is the claim that one of the colleagues of this Mjinya (the prison guard) has the rank of “Major.” This rank is for military officers, not prison guards.
Even the name “Mjinya” is dubious. There are no Rwandans called “Mjinya.”
Kurth, Caine Kanimba, and the whole of the Rusesabagina gang can’t even lie straight.
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