Béatrice Munyenyezi, expelled from the United States, sentenced to life in prison for the genocide of the Tutsi

2024-04-13 13:58:18

A Rwandan woman, deported from the United States to Kigali in 2021, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Huye (south) for her role in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, the daily The New Times reported this Saturday. This conviction comes as the country commemorates 30 years of the genocide carried out by the extremist Hutu regime between April and July 1994, leaving at least 800,000 dead, mainly among the Tutsi minority but also moderate Hutus, according to UN figures.

Béatrice Munyenyezi, 54, was found guilty on Friday of “murder as a crime of genocide”, “complicity in genocide”, “incitement to commit genocide” and “complicity in rape”, according to the newspaper , one of the main ones in the country. On the other hand, she was acquitted of “planning genocide”, due to lack of evidence, he specifies.

“Commander” imprisoned for life

Béatrice Munyenyezi denied all the accusations against her, but the court found her guilty in particular of having ordered murders and of having committed them herself, including that of a nun killed after being raped by soldiers on his orders.

According to the investigation and several testimonies, the woman who was nicknamed “the commander” supervised a road block in the town of Huye (then called Butare), where she identified Tutsi and had them killed and also encouraged Hutu extremists to rape women .

Expelled in 2021 from the United States

She was deported in April 2021 from the United States, where she had just served a ten-year prison sentence for lying about her involvement in the genocide, which allowed her to obtain American nationality.

Her case attracted the attention of American investigators while her mother-in-law Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former minister of the genocidal regime, and her husband Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, former local leader of the Interahamwe militia, were tried for crimes of genocide by the Tribunal International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. Both were sentenced to life in prison in 2011. Their sentences were reduced to 47 years on appeal.