Genocide against the Tutsi: Eric Nshimiye found guilty on five counts by a Boston federal jury

A federal jury in Boston, United States, found 54-year-old Eric Tabaro Nshimiye guilty on October 27, 2026, of four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for concealing his alleged role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. The information was reported by the Rwandan daily The New Times.

The sentence has not yet been handed down; the hearing is set for January 26, 2027. Each of the four counts of perjury carries a potential five-year prison sentence, while the obstruction of justice charge carries a ten-year sentence.

A journey that began in Butare

In 1994, Nshimiye was a medical student at the National University of Rwanda in Butare, in the current Huye district. He fled the country that same year to Kenya, then entered the United States as a refugee in 1995, concealing his alleged participation in the genocide from immigration services, according to The New Times. He obtained permanent residency, then American citizenship in 2009, and has lived in Ohio since 1995.

According to witnesses and the U.S. Department of Justice cited by the newspaper, he allegedly took part in attacks against Tutsis in Butare and manned roadblocks where people were screened before being killed. One witness, who was 17 at the time, stated that they saw him beat a tailor employed at the university hospital to death. The prosecution presented him as a known member of the MRND, the party then in power, which he denied under oath.

The trial where everything was at stake

It was not these specific acts that the jury had to judge, but rather testimony given in 2019. That year, Nshimiye testified for the defense of his former classmate Jean-Léonard Teganya, who had been accused since 2017 of obtaining American asylum by hiding his membership in the MRND and his alleged involvement in the genocide. On the stand, Nshimiye claimed that neither he nor Teganya had participated in the genocide or belonged to the MRND or the Interahamwe. Teganya was convicted in April 2019 of immigration fraud and perjury.

"He lied to immigration services to become an American citizen, and he lied to a federal jury," said Tysen Duva of the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division. For Jeffrey Grimming of Homeland Security Investigations in Boston, the case "belongs to the victims," who traveled across the world to testify.

This is the essence of this decision. Thirty-two years later, it was survivors from Rwanda who enabled a foreign jurisdiction to reach a verdict. A trial of this nature still depends on their memory and their courage.