Of Carine Kanimba’s spygate ruse

Last week, Carine Kanimba, stepdaughter of Rwanda’s terror kingpin, Paul Rusesabagina, and a crew of her father’s lobbyists led by Kitty Kurth, descended on Washington D.C. eager to malign the Rwandan government.

Prior to meeting US Congress members, Kurth had widely advertised the event as a game changer. The testimony of Kanimba was to prove that the Rwandan government was spying on her and other family members using Pegasus, an Israeli spyware, to track and tap their mobile phones.

They lobbied Congress and had a day of hearing before the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Rep Adam Schiff. But Kanimba’s testimony was an embarrassment. When asked by Schiff whether she is sure Rwanda uses the spyware to spy on Americans, she mangled her words.

“I’m not exactly sure,” she responded, adding: “those are the same people (Rwandan government) who abducted and tortured my father.”

Rwanda denied possessing the very expensive technology. But the lies concocted by Kanimba and peddled by the global north media and international organisations, notably Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International persist.

Kanimba and her supporters also allege that the Rwandan government used Pegasus to spy on Kanimba’s relatives.

Despite the huge publicity largely initiated by Kurth through various communications outlets, Kanimba’s testimony landed as a dumb squid. It didn’t achieve its prime goal. Kanimba and her father’s lobbyists lie to people about Rusesabagina’s heroism made in Hollywood though the blockbuster movie Hotel Rwanda. Inside Rwanda, he’s not a hero, but a villain, a man hungry to overthrow the current government using his armed militias, the MRCD/FLN.

As a leader of this militia group, he supported it financially, and cheered as it wreaked havoc in south western Rwanda, attacking passenger buses. They also ransacked Nyabimata village where they killed several people and damaged a lot of property.

So, is that a hero one should be proud of? Nevertheless, the #FreeRusesabagina campaign is agitating for the US government to use its leverage over Rwanda to obtain his immediate release.

That unproven accusation made by Kanimba also appears in a recent letter to Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary State, by Sen Robert Menendez to sanction Rwanda for alleged illegal imprisonment of a US lawful resident.

One wonders whether being a US resident is a licence to go stir up terrorist activities in one’s homeland. Rusesabagina, before being a US resident, and Belgian citizen, is a Rwandan national.

Kanimba and the supporters of the terror kingpin are banking their hope for his immediate release on Blinken’s visit to Rwanda.

But it won’t be easy, given the statement made by Rwanda’s Foreign Ministry ahead of Blinken’s visit. On August 4, Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Vincent Biruta, declared:

“On the case of Rwandan citizen Paul Rusesabagina, on which we had engaged the United States for more than a decade, Rwanda welcomes the opportunity to once again make clear that his arrest and conviction for serious crimes against Rwandan citizens (alongside 20 other accomplices in the same trial) while residing in the United States, were lawful under both Rwandan and international law.”

So, here, we have a preview of the encounter of the US Secretary of State and Rwandan government officials. Rwanda is not ready to give in to outside pressure to free a convicted terrorist.

In the meantime, Kanimba and Rusebagina’s other lobbyists who set up a cash-making website https://paul.org will carry on lying and hoodwinking gullible US citizens, making them believe their campaign will free Rusesabagina from jail.