US trial begins for Rwandan-American accused of role in genocide

Prosecutors say Eric Nshimiye, a 55-year-old father of four and a US citizen, took part in a nationwide outbreak of genocidal violence against ethnic minority Tutsis by majority Hutu extremists in April 1994. More than 800,000 people were killed over about 100 days, in what has been called a genocide by the United Nations.

Investigators from the US Department of Homeland Security arrested Nshimiye at his home in Ohio in 2024, alleging he had lied to them in an interview about his time in Rwanda during the genocide. They also allege he committed perjury in a previous trial in 2019 in Boston when he testified on behalf of a friend who was also accused of perpetrating the genocide. Prosecutors say Nshimiye, a medical student at the time of the genocide in the town of Butare, himself took part in the killing and rape of Tutsis.

Hutus who took part in the violence “heeded calls by the government to terminate their neighbours,” Assistant United States Attorney Christopher Looney told the court on Tuesday, including Nshimiye in the group.

“He himself attacked Tutsis, and handed Tutsis over to be killed and raped,” Looney said.

During his 2019 testimony, Nshimiye denied being part of the genocide, and said he was not part of the pro-Hutu National Revolutionary Movement for Development and the Interahamwe, the paramilitary group blamed for most of the killings during the genocide.

Nshimiye faces charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for those denials. If convicted, the Trump administration could try to revoke Nshimiye’s citizenship.

Nshimiye, who is an ethnic Hutu, says he had gone to the capital, Kigali, on holiday before violence broke out. He says he never made it back to Butare because of the chaos engulfing the country in April 1994, and instead left the country as a refugee, eventually coming to the US and becoming a citizen in 2009.

At the opening of his case on Tuesday, Nshimiye, dressed in a dark blue suit, was calm and occasionally turned to smile at family and friends who came to support him. Since his arrest, authorities have kept Nshimiye without bail in a Boston-area federal jail.

Prosecutors plan to put more than a dozen witnesses on the stand, most flown in from Rwanda, who say they recall seeing Nshimiye participate in pro-Hutu political events before the genocide, and some who say they later saw him participate in genocidal violence in Butare.

His family says the events of 1994 are more complex than the simple narrative of Hutus killing Tutsis. Simply being an ethnic Hutu, Epa Bizimana, Nshimiye’s nephew, told Al Jazeera, should not be enough to convince a jury someone took part in the genocide.

“The jury is going to learn some things for the first time; Americans are going to learn something for the first time,” said Bizimana, who was 10 years old when he fled Rwanda with his family in 1994.

Defence lawyers told the court on Tuesday that Nshimiye was not part of the Hutus who participated in the genocide. They say the entire case against him is built on the accounts of eyewitnesses, some of whom were only able to identify him after repeatedly being shown his photo, and some of whom have a history of giving different testimony in trials of alleged genocidaires over the years.

Kurt Kerns, one of the defence attorneys, told the court that the prosecution’s case was based on evidence “that only reared its ugly head after Eric came to testify as a character witness, and 25 years after the genocide.”

Kerns said Nshimiye had never been implicated in domestic and international tribunals after the genocide, including the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as an informal transitional justice system inside Rwanda, called gacaca, which tried more than a million people for their role in the atrocity.