A Rwandan man who hid his involvement in the 1994 genocide has been sentenced to eight years in jail.
Jean Leonard Teganya committed “the most serious form of immigration fraud” by “lying about his status as a war criminal to win asylum,” US Attorney Andrew E Lelling said in a statement.
In just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists.
Teganya denies that he was involved in the genocide.
But prosecutors in the US said Teganya participated in at least seven murders and five rapes during that time.
Although Teganya’s charge and sentencing was for immigration fraud, not his activities during the genocide, the case proved a challenge for the judge.
“Do I sentence him as a liar or do I sentence him as a murder, or a rapist, or genocide participant?” Judge F Dennis Saylor IV is reported to have said by AP news agency.
Federal prosecutors in Boston said they would have sought a life term had the sentencing been for murder and rape, Reuters news agency reports.
