The Commander: Beatrice Munyenyezi

[Bagamoyo]

28 April 2021
Kigali, Rwanda

Trial of first high profile female suspect in Rwanda genocide case adjourned​

File photo : Beatrice Munyenyezi



Beatrice Munyenyezi , 51, who is the first high profile female genocide suspect deported to Rwanda from the US and being charged with seven crimes related to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, is escorted by police officers at the Kicukiro Primary Court in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 28, 2021

Genocide suspect Munyenyezi arrives in Rwanda​

Source : The New Times Rwanda

Background story:
CONCORD, N.H. USA
In 1998, Beatrice Munyenyezi came from Rwanda to New Hampshire, USA claiming that she needed sanctuary from the horrific genocide that had recently happened in her home country. On her immigration forms, she swore that she’d had nothing to do with the violence. She was a mother, after all! But when an agent from the Department of Homeland Security began looking into her past, he couldn’t believe the brutal stories that emerged.

July 15, 2013

Rwandan national sentenced to 10 years for fraudulently obtaining citizenship​

Concealed her involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide
CONCORD, N.H. – A federal judge sentenced a Manchester woman Monday on two counts of procuring citizenship unlawfully. The sentence follows an extensive investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

This case marks the first such conviction in the United States for concealing one’s personal participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

District Court Judge Stephen J. McAuliffe sentenced Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43, to 10 years in prison, the maximum sentence for the charge of procuring citizenship unlawfully. She also faces removal proceedings after serving the sentence imposed by the court. McAuliffe also stripped Munyenyezi of her U.S. citizenship on the day of her conviction.

Munyenyezi was charged in June 2010 and later convicted in March 2012, by a New Hampshire federal jury. The jury determined she obtained her U.S. citizenship unlawfully, after fleeing her home country of Rwanda, by misrepresenting material facts to U.S. immigration authorities.

"She has stolen the highly prized status of U.S. citizenship," said McAuliffe in court. "The defendant was not a mere spectator; the defendant personally participated in the killing of men, women and children, merely because they were called Tutsi."

Testimony during the 12-day trial revealed that Munyenyezi concealed her role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, including her involvement in the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), the political party in power before and during the genocide, and its youth wing, the Interahamwe.

The Interahamwe ran a militia that played a key role in the genocide. Evidence at trial demonstrated that Munyenyezi, as a member of the Interahamwe, participated, aided and abetted in the persecution and murder of Tutsi people during the 1994 genocide.

Several witnesses testified to Munyenyezi’s staffing of a notorious roadblock outside her home during the course of the genocide, where she checked identification of passers-by and decided who would be allowed to pass and who would be detained pending their almost certain death.

The evidence demonstrated that Munyenyezi misrepresented these facts in order to obtain immigration and naturalization benefits. She was ineligible to become a U.S. citizen because of her participation in genocide and murder.

"Today’s sentence should send a clear message to those involved in human rights violations that the United States will not protect those who take advantage of our accepting borders. I want to thank the tireless efforts of the prosecution team and investigators in this case, who have worked doggedly to ensure that justice is served," said U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz.

Source: Rwandan national sentenced to 10 years for fraudulently obtaining citizenship

 

[Richard spencer]

She is stupid, any sane culprit of horrific crimes wouldnt even think of seeking asylum in US. Had she came to Tanzania no one would even notice her presence.

 

[Torque vs HP]

Imeisha hio.

Ataenda kusagwa huko jela akiwa menopause.

 

[Bagamoyo]

Somo hilo, ukifanya makosa ya dhidi ya uhai wa binadamu hautakaa salama hata kama ulikuwa na vigogo nyuma yako na hasa kama hao vigogo watakuwa hawako madarakani kwa kukimbia nchi au walishaaga dunia hivyo vigogo hao hawana namna ya kukukingia kifua.

The Monster Next Door​

Howe Street on the east side of Manchester, New Hampshire, is part of a tight-knit community of working-class families where neighbors commonly show up unannounced for a favor. So nothing seemed unusual to LoriAnn Silver when her new next-door neighbor walked onto her porch in the summer of 2004 and pressed the buzzer.

The woman at the door wore an African caftan, braided hair extensions, and a friendly smile. “I’m Bea,’’ she said. In a mix of French, Kinyarwandan, and American accents, she explained that she’d just moved into the adjacent home, a three-bedroom ranch with a fenced-in backyard and an above-ground swimming pool that was perfect for her three young daughters: Charlene, then 11, and twins Simbi and Saro, 10. The pool, however, was giving her trouble. LoriAnn happily sent her husband, Scott, over to help.

This first encounter sparked a routine of sorts. LoriAnn seldom saw Bea except when she needed a hand with something, usually the pool, the lawn, or shoveling the driveway. For the most part, Bea and her family kept to themselves. Once, when Bea was outside wearing a tank top, Scott noticed several ribbons of scar tissue running along her back. But Bea didn’t offer much about her past, and LoriAnn didn’t pry. What little their neighbor told them was enough: Bea’s full name was Beatrice Munyenyezi, and she said she had fled to the United States as a political refugee from her native Rwanda.

Located in central Africa, Rwanda is home to two ethnic groups, a Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority. After decades of violence reaching as far back as the early 1960s, Juvénal Habyarimana, Rwanda’s Hutu president and the leader of the MRND political party, was assassinated in April 1994. In the aftermath, extremist Hutus went on a rampage, using Habyarimana’s death to justify 100 days of genocidal slaughter. It was one of the bloodiest purges of the 20th century. Soldiers, gendarmes, politicians, and ordinary citizens murdered as many as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

It wasn’t something Bea talked about. “She said [her husband] was a political prisoner of war,” LoriAnn says. “We didn’t know what that really meant. She came from a country that was having a lot of problems and wanted a better life here.”

A Hutu by birth, Munyenyezi had fled from Rwanda to Kenya by the time she applied for U.S. refugee status in 1995. On her application, she wrote, “Since April 1994 my home country is going through a very difficult time.… Given the scale of the killings, I don’t feel secure enough to return home.” The violence had been so bad that applicants from Rwanda were required to answer specific questions about the genocide, including “Did you have any involvement in the killing or injury to other persons since April 1, 1994? Did you in any way encourage others to participate in such killing or injury?” Munyenyezi wrote, “No.” Less than a year later, the United States welcomed her with open arms.

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s Rwandan ID card. / Photograph courtesy of Brian Andersen
Granted sanctuary from the killing fields, Munyenyezi and her girls began to heal and flourish. Bea needed ongoing treatment for a chronic medical condition and was directed to the Catholic Charities New Hampshire Immigration & Refugee Services, which worked closely with a nearby hospital that specialized in her illness. Charlene, Saro, and Simbi attended Catholic schools. Munyenyezi secured a job with the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority, where she became an advocate for refugees, and later enrolled as a politics and society major at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. And then, on July 18, 2003, Munyenyezi took the oath of allegiance to the United States of America and was sworn in as a naturalized citizen inside the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.

As Munyenyezi grew into her new life in New England, she began to speak publicly about her experiences back home. In 2005, New Hampshire Public Radio invited her and Manchester Mayor Robert Baines to appear on a program called Finding Refuge in the Queen City, where she talked about the obstacles she had overcome. “I am a fighter,” Munyenyezi said. “I like to be independent. I worked so hard to be here. I do what I have to do to survive.”

Eventually, she began to collect her story into a memoir under the title Life in the Middle of Nowhere: Surviving Genocide in Rwanda and Zaire—an homage to the famous memoir Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire, written in 2000 by Hutu genocide survivor Marie Béatrice Umutesi. In her memoir, which was never published, Munyenyezi described surviving a Tutsi attack on her village in 1990, and claimed she had witnessed Tutsis massacring thousands of Hutus in the lead-up to April 1994, when the tables turned and Hutus began slaughtering Tutsis. She wrote of surviving the “100 days of genocide,” and then fleeing Rwanda for America.

The powerful story of a refugee’s survival impressed many of the advocates Munyenyezi encountered in New England. “What I know about Beatrice is she was a go-getter,” says Cathy Chesley, of the Catholic Charities program in New Hampshire. “She wanted a college degree. She wanted the best for her daughters.”

In January 2004, Munyenyezi’s older sister, Prudence Kantengwa, had arrived in Boston on a travel visa and applied for political asylum. Prudence had to answer the same question her sister responded to so many years earlier: Had she or any immediate family members participated in the killings during the Rwandan genocide? Prudence said she hadn’t, but admitted that her husband had been director of the Hutu-backed internal security forces. That confession sparked interest from U.S. Homeland Security, and her case landed three years later on the desk of Brian Andersen, a Boston-based war-crimes specialist. When Andersen noticed that Prudence had a sister living in New Hampshire, he began to wonder.

Thus began his investigation into a mystery that spanned more than seven years and three continents: Who really was the woman living at 630 Howe Street? READ MORE : The Monster Next Door: Rwandan Genocide

 

[dudus]

She is stupid, any sane culprit of horrific crimes wouldnt even think of seeking asylum in US. Had she came to Tanzania no one would even notice her presence.

... Had she come ...

 

[Bagamoyo]

01 May 2021​

Brussels, Belgium​

Vincent Biruta: ‘It’s time to open a new chapter between Rwanda and France’​

6 mins ago
In an interview with FRANCE 24, Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Vincent Biruta said that two recent reports on France’s role in the 1994 genocide – one submitted in France and the other in Rwanda – came “almost to the same” conclusion, and allows for the potential opening of a new chapter in diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Source : France24