The United States government has deported Beatrice Munyenyenzi, a genocide suspect who was in 2013 arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for immigration fraud.
Beatrice Munyenyenzi (51) is the wife of genocide convict-Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, who was sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his role under a militia known as the Interahamwe accused of having carrying out some of the most brutal atrocities during the genocide in Rwanda.
According to records, she is accused of personally participating in the killing of men, women and children, merely because they were called Tutsi. An estimated 800,000 people, mostly from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, were killed in Rwanda in 1994.
In 2013, a US court sentenced Beatrice Munyenyezi to 10 years in prison for the charge of procuring citizenship unlawfully but also stripped her of U.S. citizenship after fleeing her home country of Rwanda, and misrepresenting material facts to U.S. immigration authorities.
After serving her US sentence, Munyenyezi was to be deported to Rwanda where genocide charges could await her. She is also said to be the first person to be convicted in the US over the genocide.
Beatrice Munyenyezi arrives today, Friday.
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.
Before she was arrested and convicted, Munyenyezi attended university and worked in a city government office.
The sworn affidavit from a U.S. immigration agent reads: “Munyenyezi participated, committed, ordered, oversaw, conspired, aided and abetted, and assisted in and directed the persecution, kidnapping, rape and murder of numerous individuals.”
Witnesses 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. Munyenyezi strongly denies committing any such acts.
Her husband, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, and his mother are both serving life sentences in Rwanda, where they were convicted of genocide charges.