US witness tells how Rusesabagina fundraised, procured arms for armed groups

Dr. Michelle Martin testified how Rusesabagina fundraised, procured arms to destabilise Rwanda

Prof. Michelle Martin, an American academic who was once a volunteer with Paul Rusesabagina’s Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF) on Wednesday, March 24, appeared in a court in the Rwandan capital Kigali and testified against the Hotel Rwanda 'hero' Paul Rusesabagina.

She detailed, at length, all she knows about how Rusesabagina and his groups actually planned to overthrow the Rwandan government. 

Rusesabagina was not in court as he earlier decided to withdraw from the trial, but the court decided that it proceeds even without him. A few days ago, his rendition line of defence suffered a blow in court. Rusesabagina and 20 others face charges outlined in a 300-page indictment related to their involvement with the National Liberation Front (FLN), the armed wing of the political party known as MRCD. Rusesabagina faces nine counts linked to terrorism. Among others, he and his co-accused were allegedly involved in terror attacks on Rwandan soil between 2018 and 2019 which claimed nine lives.

Martin told the court that the information she had relates to her personal knowledge of the activities of Rusesabagina and his associates; Rusesabagina’s then political outfit, PDR-Ihumure and its allies, from around 2009 to 2012.

Within a few months of working with the foundation, she came to believe, based on observation, that the foundation did not operate as a humanitarian organization, Martin told the court. Besides mobilizing funding for terrorist groups, as she found out from correspondences between Rusesabagina and his networks, he wanted to overthrow the Rwandan government yet she knew that his foundation was barred from undertaking political activities.

Martin said she never witnessed any activity geared at supporting widows and orphans, who were the purported beneficiaries of Rusesabagina’s foundation yet it was registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit, non-political charity providing human services.

Her winding tale in court starts from the day she met a Rusesabagina associate called Providence Rubingisa, who would be her friend and colleague until she learned that he was not the man he pretended to be but a Genocide revisionist with a wide network of similar minded people intent on causing trouble. When Martin first met Rubingisa, he claimed to be a survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. She was happy to help and support his charity activities and they worked together.

Rubingisa who was not a fluent English speaker then gave her full access to his emails and sooner than later, she was shocked by what she gradually learned from the correspondences she read as well as the many phone and Skype calls in which he discussed politics.

At some point, when she asked, Rubingisa told her he was part of a political opposition group called PDR-Ihumure and Rusesabagina was its leader. The plot would soon get thicker as he confided that they actually supported the creation of another party in Rwanda, PS-Imberakuri, led by Bernard Ntaganda, contested in the 2020 presidential elections. Once Ntaganda was elected, she was told, the plan was that Rusesabagina would return to Rwanda and take over - oust President Paul Kagame and his Tutsi government. Then she started getting suspicious.

She got into the habit of scrolling through Rubingisa's lengthy ‘Yahoo Groups’ exchanges and saving many of them. Martin soon figured out that Rubingisa and his group peddled a different narrative of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and she was disturbed.

She said: "I had emails forwarded to me in 2009 but in the middle of 2010 I was certain that I wasn't dealing with Genocide survivors… I started taking screenshots and copying emails. "When I started putting the pieces together and finding out who they (Rusesabagina and Rubingisa) were, quite frankly, I was outraged."

Her friend, she realised, was not only a Genocide denier but was actually involved with people intent on overthrowing government in Rwanda. They were connected to armed militia groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

She also realized that Rubingisa and PDR Ihumure members were misleading the U.S public on the 1994 Genocide, yet purporting to be genocide survivors. Much came to light when she offered to be a ghostwriter for Rubingisa’s autobiography. In his interviews he shared the traditional narrative of the Genocide where the Tutsi were killed, yet in the other stories he contradicted that.

Martin found out how the HRRF came about in 2006 and how both Rusesabagina and Rubingisa and their network of Genocide deniers and former Rwandan regime networks used their charities to dupe unsuspecting Amercians out of money.

With what she had learned about them, she told the court, she did not want to be a bystander. "I had this access (to facts) and I decided to do something about it." She contacted US law enforcement.