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Paul Rusesabagina is set to fly to Qatar, before joining his family in the US, as soon as his request to leave Rwanda is approved.

He was released from prison on Friday night after negotiations brokered by Doha and is believed to be hosted by Qatari representatives in Kigali.

Mr Rusesabagina, a former hotel manager, was portrayed as a hero in the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, and was sentenced to 25 years for terrorism by a Rwandan court in what supporters called a sham trial.

In 2020 he was tricked to going to Rwanda in a private jet, thinking he was heading to neighbouring Burundi.

On Friday, Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said on Twitter that “the procedure for his transfer” to Qatar was under way, from where Mr Rusesabagina will head to the US.

On Tuesday last week Rwanda's President Paul Kagame was in Doha, where he met Qatar's ruler Amir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. Mr Rusesabagina was released just three days later.

The US has long demanded Mr Rusesabagina's release, but Washington hasn’t been on very good terms with Rwanda for its views on the government's human rights record.

For Washington, Qatar which is a long-time US partner but also “a close friend and big investor in Rwanda’s aviation sector, was a good way to go”, Patrick Karamaga, a political science lecturer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, told BBC Great Lakes.

In 2019, Qatar agreed to invest 60% in the $1.3bn (£1bn) project to build the biggest airport in East Africa in Bugesera, some 40km (25 miles) south-east of Kigali.

The following year Qatar Airways bought 49% of the Rwandan state-owned carrier, Rwandair.

“Rwanda would resist the US pressure but not to a request of a friend who is investing hundreds of million dollars,” Mr Karamaga says.

On Friday, Mr al-Ansari said Qatar had become “a reliable international partner in resolving disputes through peaceful and diplomatic means”.

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A migrant originally from Sierra Leone has told the BBC's Newsday programme that black people have no future in Tunisia due to escalating racial tensions with Arab people in the country.

"In Tunisia, black sub-Saharan Africans will not have a future here and neither will our children," said Josephus Thomas, a construction worker.

"We need evacuation," out of Tunisia he said, "even" if that meant going to another African country, he added.

Some countries have been offering to repatriate their citizens, such as Ivory Coast and Guinea.

The tensions started after President Kais Saied accused sub-Saharan African migrants living in the country of causing a crime wave and described them as a demographic threat.

Since then black Africans have told the BBC they have faced increased racism in Tunisia.

Mr Thomas described one frightening scene where he saw "Tunisian boys who were armed with sticks, sharp metal, knives and stones" chasing some Gambian, Senegalese and Guinean migrants.

He went on to describe the situationion in Tunisia as "messy and horrible" and said he has attempted to leave by boat himself.

“If I have the opportunity to leave by boat I will take it because it’s better than living in Tunisia where you don’t know what they might do to you next.”

You can listen to the full Newsday interview here at 28 minutes in.