Ohio man convicted in US of lying about role in Rwandan genocide

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - A Rwandan-born Ohio man has been convicted of US charges that he lied during a 2019 criminal trial as part of a decades-long scheme to conceal his involvement in the African nation's 1994 genocide.

A federal jury in Boston on Tuesday found Eric Nshimiye guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from testimony he gave during the earlier immigration fraud trial of a former classmate who was also accused of participating in the atrocities.

Nshimiye, 54, is scheduled to be sentenced on January 26, according to a spokesperson for US Attorney Leah Foley. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

Nshimiye has lived in the United States since 1995, when he gained admission as a refugee. He became a US citizen in 2003. At the time of his arrest in 2024, he was working as an engineer for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co GT.O while living in Uniontown, Ohio.

Prosecutors said Nshimiye falsified and concealed information about himself to hide that he participated in the massacre by the hard-line Hutu regime of an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus during three months of slaughter in his native Rwanda.

Citing witnesses, prosecutors alleged that when the violence broke out, Nshimiye was in Butare, where he had been attending university as a medical student along with his classmate Jean Leonard Teganya.

Prosecutors said both men belonged to the political party that helped perpetrate the genocide, and that Nshimiye during the violence attacked Tutsis and handed Tutsis over to be raped or killed.

Yet when called as a defense witness in Teganya's 2019 trial, Nshimiye denied participating in the genocide or being a member of the ruling Hutu-dominated party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development.

Teganya was convicted of perjury and visa fraud charges and was sentenced later in 2019 to more than eight years in prison.

Defense attorney Kurt Kerns told jurors in his opening statement on October 13 that the charges against Nshimiye were based on "fabricated accusations" and that he was not even in Butare when the violence began.

Kerns argued prosecutors only charged Nshimiye after he stepped up to help a friend by testifying as a character witness in Teganya's case.

"At the time, he trusted that the American system of justice would protect him," Kerns said. "And that trust, you'll see in the course of that trial, was betrayed."