---
title: "After 32 years and three countries, a Butare medical student is flown back to Kigali"
description: "The US deported Jean Leonard Teganya, jailed for lying to get asylum, to face a 2014 Rwandan genocide indictment over the Butare hospital"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-11-10T13:54:35Z
modified: 2026-11-10T15:21:57Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/after-32-years-and-three-countries-a-butare-medical-student--07afac
language: en
tags: ["genocide", "rwanda", "asylum", "justice", "immigration", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# After 32 years and three countries, a Butare medical student is flown back to Kigali

*The US deported Jean Leonard Teganya, jailed for lying to get asylum, to face a 2014 Rwandan genocide indictment over the Butare hospital*

By Jan Sokol · November 10, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/after-32-years-and-three-countries-a-butare-medical-student--07afac

## In brief

- The US deported Jean Leonard Teganya to Rwanda, where he arrived at Kigali International Airport on 9 November 2026
- Rwanda’s prosecution authority indicted him in 2014 for genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Butare prefecture
- US trial evidence accused him of leading soldiers and militia through Butare’s hospital to find Tutsi patients and refugees
- Canada rejected his asylum claims in 2002 and 2012; he crossed into the US on foot near Houlton, Maine, in August 2014
- A US jury convicted him in 2019 of immigration fraud and perjury, not genocide; he received a 97-month prison sentence

On the evening of 9 November 2026 a plane landed at Kigali International Airport, and American security officers walked a 55-year-old man off it and handed him to Rwandan prosecutors. His name is Jean Leonard Teganya. In 1994 he was a medical student in Butare. He had been away for thirty-two years.

Rwanda’s National Public Prosecution Authority confirmed the handover in a short statement, [as Al Jazeera reported](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/10/who-is-jean-leonard-teganya-deported-by-us-over-rwanda-genocide-claims). The authority said it had indicted him in 2014 for genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Butare prefecture, in the south of the country. It gave no details of what exactly it accuses him of, and it did not say when he will appear in court.

## The hospital

Teganya was born in 1971. In the spring of 1994 he was studying medicine at the National University of Rwanda in Butare and doing his practical training at the University Teaching Hospital there. Hospitals are places where the wounded go, and in those months the wounded, the hunted and the frightened went there too.

The account of what happened next comes from his trial in the United States, not from any Rwandan court. According to the US Department of Justice, the trial evidence showed that Teganya, who was tied to the ruling party of the day, the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), and to its Interahamwe militia, led groups of soldiers and militiamen through the wards looking for Tutsi patients and refugees in hiding. The prosecution said that the people they found were taken away and killed behind the maternity ward.

![A woodcut-style room contains two metal beds, a hanging mosquito net, an open window overlooking tropical plants, and an open doorway casting long shadows.](https://rews.cc/img/285447d7b6dd06486ec8f4de9b2f167828367080.webp)

Prosecutors also put forward evidence linking him to the killing of three Tutsi people at the hospital and of Tutsi students in university housing. They alleged that he took part in five rapes of two Tutsi women who had sought shelter in the hospital.

Behind the maternity ward. A building where lives begin, and behind it a place where the soldiers took people. The prosecution never had to say more than that.

## The long road out

In July 1994, as the genocide was ending and the regime that organised it fell apart, Teganya left the country. US court records trace his route through what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then Kenya, then India. He was one of a great many who crossed the western border that summer. Some of them stayed in the Congolese forests with their weapons for decades, [taught that going home meant death](https://rews.cc/a/taught-that-home-meant-death-fdlr-commanders-walk-out-of-con-d6f0ec). Teganya kept going, and in 1999 he reached Canada.

He asked Canada for asylum, which it refused in 2002 and again in 2012. The US appeal judgement summarises the Canadian reasoning in one cold sentence: he would not have survived in Rwanda in 1994 unless the killers had believed he shared their intention to kill Tutsi and moderate Hutu. In other words, surviving in that place was itself treated as evidence.

Canada’s proceedings took about fifteen years. When they were over and a deportation order stood against him, Teganya slipped away from it. On 3 August 2014 he crossed into the United States on foot near Houlton, Maine, was picked up, and asked the Americans for asylum.

![A vintage woodcut shows a traveler carrying a suitcase through a rustic fence onto a winding path through pine forests and rolling hills.](https://rews.cc/img/4591fccbb9d90b220f7b918a1fc163266d17b45b.webp)

In Kigali, that same year, prosecutors drew up the indictment that was waiting for him this week.

## Convicted of lying

The United States did not try him for genocide. Its courts lacked jurisdiction over murders committed in Butare, so the case it could bring concerned what he had said to American immigration officials: that he had hidden his political affiliations and what he did during the genocide in order to win asylum.

He was indicted in September 2017 on two counts of immigration fraud and three counts of perjury. On 5 April 2019, after an 18-day trial in Boston, a federal jury convicted him on all five counts. [According to an archived Immigration and Customs Enforcement release](https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/rwandan-man-sentenced-immigration-fraud-and-perjury-connection-1994-genocide), Judge F. Denis Saylor IV sentenced him on 1 July 2019 to 97 months in prison, a term that included an enhancement for obstruction of justice because he gave false testimony at the trial itself. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the convictions and the sentence in May 2021.

So the law did what it could with the tools it had. It could not put the hospital on trial in Massachusetts, but it could try a man for lying about it. Bureaucracies have their own idea of justice, and sometimes a false answer on a form is the only crime they are able to prove. The witnesses described the maternity ward in a Boston courtroom, and a jury judged the asylum forms.

![A woodcut-style illustration shows a judge’s gavel lying diagonally across a blank form on a wooden surface, with a courthouse in the background.](https://rews.cc/img/b04e8d1ed2183974671cf1ed359a5ec2db32ac95.webp)

His sentence served, he was put on a plane.

## What waits in Kigali

Rwandan prosecutors said they [received Teganya](https://www.ktpress.rw/2026/11/u-s-deports-genocide-fugitive-jean-leonard-teganya-back-to-rwanda/) following his deportation and thanked American judicial authorities for their cooperation. Rwandan coverage, including [The New Times](https://www.newtimes.co.rw/article/40333/news/crime/photos-us-deports-rwandan-man-facing-genocide-charges), placed the alleged crimes in Butare, now Huye District. The statement still did not list the individual allegations, and [Reuters noted](https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2026-11-10-us-deports-rwandan-national-accused-of-involvement-in-genocide/) the same gap.

That matters. The accusations aired in Boston were evidence in a fraud and perjury case. No one has published the charges in the Rwandan indictment, and it would be premature to assume they are the same. Nobody has convicted Teganya of genocide anywhere. His return is not a verdict, and in Rwanda he will be able to defend himself.

Three legal systems have now handled this one man. Canada asked whether he deserved protection. The United States asked whether he had told the truth. Rwanda will ask the oldest question, the one the other two could not take up: whether he was responsible for the deaths in Butare in 1994.

More than three decades have passed since then. The patients who hid in those wards and the students in those dormitories are not here to testify. The hospital is still there, and so is the ground behind the maternity ward.