Rwandan American convicted of perjury over 1994 genocide role

Nshimiye was arrested in 2024 after investigators from the Department of Homeland Security alleged he lied about his activities during the genocide in an interview. He had been accused of concealing his involvement when he entered the United States after the violence and became a citizen in 2009. The immigration charge was dropped before trial, but the jury found him guilty on five counts.

Prosecutors presented witnesses from Rwanda who said Nshimiye took part in killings and other violence against Tutsis in Butare, where he was a medical student. Experts helped the jury understand the scale of the genocide, which killed more than 800,000 people in about 100 days. Others placed Nshimiye in the pro-Hutu National Revolutionary Movement for Development and the Interahamwe paramilitary.

Assistant Attorney General A Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement: "For nearly three decades, this defendant concealed his involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the heinous acts of violence he committed, including clubbing people to death. Then, he lied to immigration officials in order to become a US citizen, and he lied to a federal jury to protect himself and a fellow perpetrator of the Rwandan genocide."

The defence argued Nshimiye had never been implicated by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or the domestic gacaca courts, and pointed to inconsistencies in witness testimony. Defence witnesses said Nshimiye was in Kigali or elsewhere during the killings. Attorneys also argued that Rwandan authorities had interfered by meeting some witnesses before they testified.

Nshimiye’s son Tresor, who attended the verdict, told Al Jazeera: "It was quite shocking, difficult to process at first because we were expecting a different outcome. We were expecting to bring him home." He added: "At the end of the day, it was just two competing stories, and so much is lost with this all happening 30 years or so ago … I guess the jury was more convinced of the prosecutor’s witnesses because they victimised themselves in their stories."

After the verdict, Nshimiye’s attorneys requested that the two and a half years he had already spent in prison be counted toward his sentence, arguing it was longer than usual for the charges and that he should be freed.

The case is one of several active prosecutions in the United States linked to the Rwandan genocide. In April 2025, Faustin Nsabumukunzi, a beekeeper in New York, was charged with concealing his role, and in June 2025, Vincent Nzigiyimfura of Dayton, Ohio, was similarly charged. Both had applied for US citizenship.