Rwandan genocide suspect deported from US

Rwanda's National Public Prosecution Authority said Monday it had received Jean Leonard Teganya after the United States deported him to Rwanda.

Teganya, 55, was convicted in the United States in April 2019 of two counts of immigration fraud and three counts of perjury after lying about his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide while seeking asylum, according to the US Department of Justice. He was sentenced to 97 months in prison and was to face removal after prison.

Court documents said Teganya, then a medical student at the National University of Rwanda and a member of the Hutu-dominated MRND party, led teams of soldiers and pro-government youth through a hospital in search of Tutsi patients and refugees, who were killed when found. The documents also implicated him in the murders of seven Tutsis and the rape of two Tutsi women.

The Rwandan genocide began in April 1994. Over about 100 days, around 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were murdered. Teganya fled Rwanda in July 1994, sought asylum in Canada in 1999, then fled Canada before a deportation order and entered the United States in 2014, where he applied for asylum without disclosing his MRND membership or activities during the genocide.