Former Medical Student Accused Over Rwanda Genocide Deported From US to Rwanda
A former medical student accused in connection with Rwanda's 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has been deported from the United States to Rwanda. According to Al Jazeera, Rwanda's National Public Prosecution Authority confirmed that Jean Leonard Teganya arrived at Kigali International Airport on the evening of November 9, 2026, accompanied by US security officers. He was handed over to Rwandan prosecutors on arrival.
Rwanda's prosecution authority indicted Teganya in 2014 over alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Butare prefecture, an administrative region of the country. Born in 1971, he was studying medicine at the National University of Rwanda in Butare. He was also undertaking practical training at the University Teaching Hospital of Butare during the genocide, in which the majority of Rwanda's Tutsi population were targeted and killed.
He left Rwanda in July 1994. He then travelled through Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as Kenya and India, before reaching Canada in 1999. He applied there for asylum, a form of protection for people who say they cannot safely return to their home country. Canadian authorities rejected his application in 2002 and again in 2012.
On August 3, 2014, he crossed into the United States on foot near Houlton, Maine, after evading a Canadian deportation order. He was indicted in September 2017 on two counts of immigration fraud and three counts of perjury, which means lying under oath. A federal jury convicted him on all five counts on April 5, 2019. On July 1, 2019, he was sentenced to 97 months in prison, a term that included an enhancement for obstruction of justice, meaning a longer sentence for interfering with the legal process. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the convictions and sentence in May 2021.
Teganya was not tried for genocide in the United States. The criminal case concerned statements he made to US immigration authorities. At his 2019 trial, however, prosecutors presented evidence that he was affiliated with the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and the Interahamwe militia.
Prosecutors also alleged that Teganya led soldiers and Interahamwe members through the hospital to search for Tutsi patients and refugees. Those taken away were killed behind the hospital's maternity ward, according to the allegations. Prosecutors further alleged that he was linked to the killing of three Tutsi people at the hospital and to the killing of Tutsi students in university accommodation. They said he took part in five rapes involving two Tutsi women who had sought shelter at the hospital.
