In 1994 they were roommates and fellow medical students in Butare. For three decades they covered for each other. The lie meant to save one of them has caught both.
On Monday evening, November 9, Jean Léonard Teganya landed in Kigali, deported by the United States. Rwanda has wanted him since 2014 for genocide and crimes against humanity in Butare, my hometown.
In 1994 Teganya was interning at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Butare, known to us simply as CHUB. US prosecutors say he led soldiers and Interahamwe through the wards hunting Tutsi patients and refugees, who were then killed behind the maternity ward, and that he took part in rapes of Tutsi women hiding there.
After the genocide he fled to Canada on a fake passport. When Canada refused him asylum, he crossed into Maine in 2014 and asked the United States for asylum, hiding his past.
In 2019 Teganya stood trial in Boston for lying to get into the country. His old roommate, Eric Nshimiye, testified for the defense and swore that neither of them took part in the genocide.
The jury convicted Teganya of immigration fraud and perjury, and the judge sentenced him to 97 months. After serving that sentence he was sent back to Rwanda, where he is expected to face trial.
Nshimiye’s turn came later. At his own trial, a witness testified that he saw Nshimiye club to death a Tutsi tailor who sewed doctors’ coats at CHUB. On October 27, 2026, a Boston jury convicted him of perjury and obstruction of justice (my story on that verdict). He faces up to 30 years when he is sentenced on January 26, 2027.
Nshimiye is a US citizen, so he cannot simply be deported. Beatrice Munyenyezi, also from Butare, was a citizen as well. She lost her citizenship for lying about her past, was deported in 2021 and was sentenced to life in Rwanda in 2024.
Justice for Butare has taken more than thirty years, and it is still arriving one case at a time.
To my fellow survivors of Butare, and to every family that lost someone at CHUB: the men who hunted us in those wards expected that time and distance would protect them, and that we would stay quiet. They were wrong. Keep telling what you saw. Testimony like yours is what put these two men in front of a jury.
Follow every case on my Genocide Fugitives Tracker.
Sources: KT Press, Reuters, US Department of Justice (Teganya), US Department of Justice (Nshimiye), Boston Globe.
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