A Rwandan man, Jean Leonard Teganya, jailed in the United States for lying about his involvement in the 1994 genocide, has been deported to his home country.
Rwanda’s National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) said on Monday that it had received Teganya following his deportation.
“The National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) today received Teganya Jean Leonard following his deportation from the United States of America,” the Rwanda state prosecutor said in a statement.
Teganya, 55, was convicted in April 2019 on two counts of immigration fraud and three counts of perjury after providing false information about his alleged role in the genocide to obtain asylum in the US, according to the US Department of Justice.
He received a 97-month prison sentence, after which he was expected to be deported.
The 1994 genocide began in April and lasted approximately 100 days, during which about 800,000 people, most of them from the minority Tutsi community, were killed.
At the time, Teganya was studying medicine at the National University of Rwanda and belonged to the Hutu-dominated ruling MRND party, which encouraged the mass killings.
Court records show that he led groups of soldiers and pro-government youths through a hospital to identify Tutsi patients and refugees, who were subsequently killed.
He was also linked to the killings of seven Tutsis and the rape of two Tutsi women.
Teganya left Rwanda in mid-July 1994, travelling through several African countries before moving to India and eventually reaching Canada, where he applied for asylum in 1999.
In 2014, he left Canada to avoid a deportation order and entered the United States. He subsequently sought asylum there but failed to disclose his membership of the MRND party or his activities during the genocide.
Last year, another Rwandan genocide suspect, Francois Gasana, was extradited from Norway to Rwanda to face charges over his alleged involvement in the 1994 killings.
