Beatrice Munyenyezi serving a 10-years sentence in federal prison for lying about her role in the 1994 genocide against Tutsi to obtain U.S. citizenship is working on an appeal.
In August, a federal judge denied an appeal bid from Beatrice Munyenyezi , who was convicted and sentenced in 2013 in the same federal courthouse in New Hampshire where she was granted citizenship years earlier. She’s serving a 10-year sentence in Alabama and faces deportation afterward.
Munyenyezi’s appealing to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. She says the judge didn’t review the stripping of her citizenship.
Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43, was immediately stripped of the US citizenship she had gained a decade earlier in the same courthouse where she was found guilty on Thursday of making false statements to officials in order to cover up how she selected Tutsis to be raped and murdered. She faces up to 10 years in prison and then likely deportation to face a trial in Rwanda for genocide.
Munyenyezi settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, with three young daughters in 1998 after claiming to have been persecuted in Rwanda.
She caught the attention of the US authorities several years later after giving false testimony on behalf of her husband and mother-in-law who were later sentenced to life in prison for genocide and other crimes against humanity by an international tribunal.
Last year, Munyenyezi’s sister, Prudence Kantengwa, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a separate trial and sentenced to 21 months in prison for failing to declare she was also in Butare in 1994 and had political connections to the perpetrators of the genocide.
Munyenyezi’s mother in law, Nyiramasuhuko, was the first woman convicted by the ICTR where she received a life sentence after being convicted of seven charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and incitement to rape. Her trial heard how she told militiamen “before you kill the women, you need to rape them”. On one occasion she ordered petrol poured over a group of women who were then burned to death after being raped. src:igihe
Munyenyezi’s husband, Ntahobali, also received a life sentence.
The Express News
