'Hotel Rwanda' star sentenced to 25 years on terror charges

Paul Rusesabagina – the "Hotel Rwanda" star, has been found guilty of being part of a terrorist group and sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Rwandan court.

Rusesabagina boycotted Monday’s announcement after declaring he didn’t expect justice in a trial he called a “sham.”

A one-time hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina was portrayed as a hero in the Hollywood film "Hotel Rwanda" about the nation’s 1994 genocide.

He has been found guilty of the formation of an illegal armed group and membership in a terrorist group.

The ruling comes more than a year after Rusesabagina disappeared during a visit to Dubai and appeared days later in Rwanda in handcuffs, accused of supporting the armed wing of his opposition political platform, Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change.

The group had claimed some responsibility for attacks in 2018 and 2019 in the south of the country in which nine Rwandans died.

Rusesabagina was the former manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali, where he sheltered hundreds of guests during the genocide that left 800,000 people dead, mostly ethnic Tutsis.

A decade later the American actor Don Cheadle played Rusesabagina, a moderate Hutu, in the Oscar-nominated blockbuster that brought his story to an international audience.