Suedi Murekezi, 35, was arrested last month in Kherson, a Russian-held port city in southern Ukraine, where he had lived for more than two years, his brother Sele Murekezi said. “We are all very concerned for his welfare. It’s obviously in danger,” he said. After not hearing from him for a month, Sele received a call from his brother in the early hours of July 7, saying he was imprisoned in Donetsk, the largest city in the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic. Murekezi also said he was in the same prison as Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, two American fighters captured by Russia last month. Unlike Drueke and Huynh, Murekezi’s friends and family say he did not participate in any fighting in Ukraine and moved to the country about four years ago, settling in Kherson in 2020. On the phone, Murekezi told his brother that he had been falsely accused of taking part in pro-Ukraine protests, a charge his brother and two close friends in Kherson denied. “They are using him as a pawn for their own propaganda purposes,” said Sele Murekezi. Kherson, the strategic gateway to Crimea, was captured by Russian forces on March 2. In the first weeks after the occupation, there were pro-Ukraine demonstrations, which were soon suppressed by the new military-civilian administration, with the help of Russian troops. A US State Department spokesman said the agency was “aware of the reports” of Murekezi’s detention, but declined to comment further, citing “privacy considerations.” Murekezi’s family said they were in daily contact with the State Department about his condition. Murekezi was born in Rwanda in 1985, but fled the country with his family after the 1994 genocide, immigrating to Minnesota. He started visiting Ukraine on business in 2017 and settled there permanently in 2020. Murekezi’s friends in Kherson first noticed his disappearance on June 8, when they saw that his car was no longer parked near his apartment. “He told us he was planning to use his car for the first time in a while in search of fuel,” said Vladimir, a native of Kherson who befriended Murekezi three years ago when he first visited the city. Vladimir has since left Kherson, but asked that his last name be withheld because his family still lives there. “We all warned him that driving was a bad idea,” he said, adding that Murekezi drove an American Dodge Challenger with American number plates. “Of course, such a car would attract the attention of the Russian police.” Two days after his disappearance, Leo de Lange, a Dutch friend of Murekezi’s in Kherson, tracked him down in a video circulating on the separatists’ Telegram channels. The clip showed a visibly distressed Mourekezi in a darkened room being instructed to repeat in Russian “glory to the Russian army”. Both de Lange and Vladimir said Murekezi was not involved in the pro-Ukrainian rallies that swept the city in March. “I know he didn’t come out and protest,” said De Lang, who added that he used to see Murekezi every week. Russian prosecutors and pro-Russian separatists did not respond to requests for comment and have not spoken publicly about Murekezi. The number of US citizens held in occupied Ukrainian territory remains unknown. In May, Kirillo Alexandrov, a US citizen living in Kherson, was released by the Florida-based nonprofit Project Dynamo after spending more than two months in captivity. At the time, the group said it was monitoring a number of cases of Americans “trapped behind enemy lines.” “Swedi is in danger, he is in a very dangerous situation. The Donetsk People’s Republic has the death penalty and does not follow international norms,” said Brian Stern, a US veteran and co-founder of Project Dynamo. “From what I understand, his only crime is that he is an American.” Last month, two Britons and a Moroccan national captured while fighting in the Ukrainian army were sentenced to death by separatists in Donetsk. Drueke and Huynh, the two American fighters allegedly held with Murekezi, have not yet been sentenced. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they would not be granted the protection afforded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, claiming they were mercenaries. There is no evidence to suggest that Murekezi fought against Russian soldiers and he is unlikely to be tried as a mercenary. However, his family is worried that Russia will use trumped-up charges to get him a long prison sentence. Sele Murekezi’s brother also expressed fear that the color of his skin put him in a particularly dire situation. “His being black adds to our fears, of course. Racism can play a role,” he said. “When he called, he told me he wasn’t tortured, but it was hard to know for sure as he was being watched during our conversation.” Before moving to Ukraine, Murekezi spent eight years in the US Air Force. He left the military in 2017 and began investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies, according to his family. His interest in crypto brought him to Ukraine, said De Lange, a fellow digital currency investor. “We quickly bonded over our passion for cryptocurrencies. We were both very excited about all the ambitious plans Ukraine had with crypto before the war started,” said De Lange, who spent four months in the Russian-held city before fleeing earlier this month to Georgia . Before the war, Ukraine had emerged as a popular destination for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs after the liberalization of its cryptocurrency regulations. “Suedi was a bitcoin maximalist,” said De Lange, a term used by industry insiders for someone with strong ideological beliefs about the cryptocurrency’s potential. But those close to him said Murekezi also developed a genuine love for Ukraine. “He loved how welcoming Ukraine and Ukrainians were. He often said that Kherson was his favorite city, he really liked it here,” Vladimir said. Mourekezi’s detention provides a rare glimpse into life in Kherson, which has been occupied for more than four months. After Russia captured the city, Kherson was cut off from Ukrainian mobile phone and internet services, complicating contact with the outside world. De Lange described the first weeks of the occupation as “intense” and “war-like”, with daily protests and long queues forming for food and other necessities. Eventually, he said, life somewhat stabilized and shops reopened, with Ukrainian food replaced by Russian and Russian passports handed out to residents. However, a climate of fear remained. “You heard daily stories of people who organized the protests being kidnapped at night. Everyone was afraid to talk to each other. It was a very somber atmosphere,” he said. Vladimir similarly described how Kherson was gripped by uncertainty and fear. He recalled how shortly after Mourekezi’s disappearance, he went to the pro-Russian military-civil administration in Kherson to demand his friend’s release. “I was seriously threatened and called and my phone was searched,” Vladimir said. “They barked at me, asking why I cared about ‘some American.’ The incident deeply affected Vladimir, he said, and he soon decided to leave Kherson, fearing that his questions had raised the suspicions of pro-Russian authorities. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST But despite the dangers of Russian occupation, friends say Murekezi did not want to leave the city and remained in an upbeat mood. “He and I used to play basketball and chess a few times a week and he seemed to get along,” said de Lange, who recalled how his friend talked “a lot” about opening a new cafe in Kherson that would accept cryptocurrencies. . “In the end, I think he was very naive about the dangers he faced as a black American in Kherson.”
