US deports genocide suspect to Rwanda
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Citizen Digital
US authorities handed Jean Léonard Teganya, accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi at the University Teaching Hospital of Butare, over to Rwandan police. Rwanda’s prosecution says he collaborated with the Interahamwe to hunt down Tutsi patients, medical staff and students, according to Citizen Digital.
The Rwandan National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) confirmed that US officers handed Jean Léonard Teganya over to Rwandan police at Kigali International Airport on the evening of Monday 9 November, under armed escort.
A former medical student at the University Teaching Hospital of Butare (CHUB) in southern Rwanda, he is accused by the Rwandan authorities of collaborating with the Interahamwe militia during the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, in particular by targeting Tutsi patients and medical staff. He was indicted in Rwanda in 2014, according to the same authorities.
After the fall of the genocidal regime in July 1994, he fled to the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then moved on to Kenya and India. In 1999, he reportedly entered Canada with a forged Zimbabwean passport and applied there for political asylum, a request that was rejected over suspicions of human rights violations. In August 2014, he crossed the border on foot near Houlton, Maine, where he was arrested by US agents. In 2019, a federal court in Boston found him guilty of immigration fraud and perjury, and he was sentenced to 97 months in prison, according to Citizen Digital.
