US plans to deport Genocide suspect

TOWSON - A Rwandan Genocide fugitive may soon be extradited to Rwanda by the United States immigration authorities, news agencies have reported. Léopold Munyakazi, 59, is alleged to have taken part in the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis in the former Gitarama, now in the Southern Province, and has long been wanted by Rwandan authorities. He was recently suspended from his teaching position at Goucher College in Baltimore, to pave way for investigations and was arrested on Tuesday afternoon at his home in Towson. Munyakazi who is on an Interpol Red Notice is accused of seven counts which include Genocide, Complicity to Genocide, conspiracy to commit Genocide, negation of the Genocide and creation and association of a criminal gang. The US media has reported that the immigration authorities have begun deportation proceedings against him. “We appreciate the development and ask authorities to send him to Rwanda where he will face justice,” agencies quoted Andrew Tusabe, the Second Counsellor in the Rwandan Embassy in Washington as saying. The spokesman of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Brandon A. Montgomery yesterday told reporters in the US that “officials in his office are taking steps to deport Munyakazi, who was arrested Tuesday at his home for overstaying his visa.” Munyakazi, who for a short time after 1994 worked as a lecturer at Kigali Institute of Education (KIE), later fled to the US after information emerged that he had participated in the Genocide especially in his home area of the former Gitarama Prefecture. Though he features on Interpol’s Red Notice, strangely enough, he had never been bothered by law enforcement officers. Munyakazi, who has been teaching French at the US College, is on record denying that there was Genocide in Rwanda.Rwanda issued Munyakazi’s arrest warrant in 2006 and sent it to the US, since then officials from the National Public Prosecutions Authority have been working with their US counterparts for possible arrest and extradition to Rwanda. Ends