A Rwandan woman, who arrived in the US as a refugee from the country’s genocide almost 20 years ago, has been jailed for lying about her role in the atrocities.
At her trial earlier this year, prosecutors accused 43-year-old Beatrice Munyenyezi, who has been in the US since 1998, of commanding a roadblock where victims were picked to be murdered.
After she serves her sentence, Munyenyezi will be deported to Rwanda where genocide charges could await her.
More than three-quarters of a million people, mostly from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, were killed in Rwanda in 1994.
Munyenyezi, who was convicted in February, wept as she was sentenced in Concord, New Hampshire to 10 years, the maximum term for the crime of false representation to United States federal authorities on Monday (July 15). She is believed to be the first person to be convicted in the US over the genocide.
During the hearing, Judge Stephen McAuliffe said Munyenyezi had “stolen the highly prized status of US citizenship”.
As the genocide was ending in July 1994, she fled to Kenya, where she gave birth to twins. She later entered the US as a refugee and settled in the north-eastern state of New Hampshire with the aid of relief agencies. She attended university and worked in a city government office.
But witnesses came forward who said that she had been a commander of a roadblock in the southern Rwandan city of Butare, where Tutsis were singled out to be killed. Her husband, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, and his mother are both serving life sentences in Rwanda, where they were convicted of genocide charges.
Defence lawyers plan to appeal Munyenyezi’s conviction.
