Rwandan genocide suspect Jean Leonard Teganya deported from the United States
The former medical student, jailed in the US for lying about his role in 1994, has been received by Rwanda's prosecution authority.
Rwanda's National Public Prosecution Authority has announced that it has received Jean Leonard Teganya, 55, following his deportation from the United States, where he was imprisoned for concealing his alleged role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
Teganya was convicted in April 2019 on two counts of immigration fraud and three counts of perjury, having lied about his past in order to obtain asylum in the United States. He was sentenced to 97 months' imprisonment, to be followed by removal.
In 1994, Teganya was a medical student at the National University of Rwanda and a member of the Hutu-dominated ruling MRND party, which incited the killings. According to court documents, he led soldiers and pro-government militiamen through a hospital in search of Tutsi patients and refugees, who were then killed. He has been implicated in the murder of seven Tutsis and the rape of two Tutsi women.
He fled Rwanda in mid-July 1994, travelling across Africa to India and then to Canada, where he sought asylum in 1999. In 2014 he crossed into the United States ahead of a Canadian deportation order and applied for asylum without disclosing his membership of the MRND or his alleged conduct during the genocide.
The genocide, which lasted some 100 days from April 1994, claimed approximately 800,000 lives, the majority of them Tutsi. Last year, Norway extradited another suspect, François Gasana, to Rwanda.