How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Insecurity and a change to the electoral

law risk disenfranchising millions

Elections in Burkina Faso

Sacking the voters

No home and no vote

T

he last

time Trésor Rusesabagina

spoke to his father was on his birthday,

when the latter called from his home in San

Antonio, Texas, to wish his son well. “He

hadn’t been anywhere for ages because of

lockdown and I thought he was just hang-

ing out, watering his plants.” 

On August 31st Trésor woke up to a wel-

ter of messages on his phone, asking if he’d

heard the news. Paul Rusesabagina had just

appeared in handcuffs at a press confer-

ence in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, hosted by

the Rwanda Investigation Bureau. The au-

thorities accuse him of founding and lead-

ing “armed extremist terror outfits” fight-

ing the Rwandan state. Mr Rusesabagina

had told his wife he was flying to Dubai for

a meeting. How he ended up in Rwanda’s

capital remains unclear.

For the former manager of the Hotel des

Mille Collines, the rendition is a nightmare

come true. Since moving his family to Bel-

gium in 1996, where he applied for asylum

before relocating to America, he had lived