A federal jury convicted a Rwandan man this week who lied about the atrocities he committed during his native country’s 1994 genocide.
The Department of Justice said Eric Tabaro Nshimiye, a 54-year-old who also goes by Eric Tabaro Nshimiyimana, was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice after he lied on the stand during the 2019 trial of Rwandan genocide perpetrator Jean Leonard Teganya.
Evidence presented at trial said Nshimiye and Teganya were prominent student members of the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND in the original French), the Hutu-dominated ruling party that led the 100-day mass slaughter.
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Prosecutors said Nshimiye fled Rwanda for Kenya in the summer of 1994, and a year later he was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee.
The DOJ said he was only admitted to the U.S. because he hid his involvement in the genocide that killed 800,000 men, women and children of the country’s Tutsi ethnic minority.
Nshimiye applied to become a lawful permanent resident, and eventually a naturalized U.S. citizen. He has lived in Ohio since he came stateside.
“Eric Tabaro Nshimiye lived under a web of lies and deception. He obtained refuge in this Country by lying to immigration officials about his involvement in the Rwandan genocide and the appalling acts he committed on the Tutsi community,” said Leah B. Foley, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.
“The United States protects victims not violent criminals. This verdict ensures Nshimiye can no longer hide behind his lies.”
Nshimiye faces a maximum of 30 years in prison for four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. The verdict applies only to his court testimony; he was not directly convicted of participation in the genocide.
His sentencing hearing is scheduled for January.
The genocide was ignited after the Hutu president’s plane was shot down over the Rwandan capital of Kigali in the spring of 1994.
Amid heightened ethnic tensions, the Hutu majority, which made up about 90% of the country’s population, responded by launching mass killings of Tutsis.
Court testimony shared that Nshimiye was a medical student in Butare, Rwanda, who beat Tutsi men and women over the head with a nail-studded club.
A trial witness who said he was a 17-year-old boy at the time testified that he saw Nshimiye club a university tailor to death. Additional witnesses said Nshimiye helped operate roadblocks and separated out Tutsis from Hutus so the minority victims could be killed.
“Eric Nshimiye is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as a refugee here in the United States in an affront to the thousands of Rwandans terrorized and displaced by the genocide he violently participated in,” said Jeffrey Grimming, acting special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations New England.
“For decades, he lived the American dream by building a life based on the continuation of lies. Now, a federal jury has brought his deceptions to an end,” he said.
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