A federal jury in Boston on Tuesday found a Rwandan-born Ohio man guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying during a 2019 criminal trial, as part of what prosecutors described as a decades-long scheme to conceal his involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, Reuters reported on October 28.
Eric Nshimiye, 54, was convicted on the charges stemming from testimony he gave as a defence witness in the earlier immigration fraud trial of a former classmate, Jean Leonard Teganya, who was also accused of participating in the atrocities, Reuters reported, citing the case record. He is scheduled to be sentenced on January 26, according to a spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment, Reuters said.
Source: Reuters (Nate Raymond), October 28, 2026
Nshimiye has lived in the United States since 1995, when he gained admission as a refugee, and became a U.S. citizen in 2003, Reuters reported. At the time of his arrest in 2024 he was working as an engineer for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. while living in Uniontown, Ohio.
What the indictment said he lied about
A filing in his case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Case 1:24-cr-10071-FDS) sets out the counts the prosecution was built on. Count One charged perjury for testifying that, while he and Teganya were university roommates, Teganya did not wear a scarf or hat with MRND insignias — when asked about the apparel, he replied "I don't remember this type of hat," and answered in the negative to questions about Teganya displaying an MRND flag and attending political rallies during university. Count Two charged perjury for denying that he lived in Butare during the genocide: under oath, he stated that "[he] was not in Butare," but rather in Kigali.
Source: U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, case filing via govinfo
Count Three charged perjury for denying his own involvement in the MRND, including political rallies and trainings, and for denying wearing a scarf, hat and lapel pin marked with MRND insignias and colours during his time at university. Count Four charged perjury for denying his involvement in the genocide while under oath. Count Five charged aiding and abetting the obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503 and 1502, with the government contending that he knowingly concealed material evidence and testified falsely in the Teganya case, the filing said.
The prosecution's account of 1994 — alleged, and denied
Prosecutors said Nshimiye falsified and concealed information about himself to hide that he participated in the massacre by the hard-line Hutu regime of an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus during three months of slaughter in his native Rwanda, Reuters reported. Citing witnesses, prosecutors alleged that when the violence broke out, Nshimiye was in Butare, where he had been attending university as a medical student along with Teganya. Prosecutors said both men belonged to the political party that helped perpetrate the genocide, and that Nshimiye during the violence attacked Tutsis and handed Tutsis over to be raped or killed. Those accounts of the genocide itself were the prosecution's allegations; the charges the Boston jury decided were perjury and obstruction — that his denials under oath were lies.
In that 2019 testimony, called as a defence witness in Teganya's trial, Nshimiye denied participating in the genocide or being a member of the ruling Hutu-dominated party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND), Reuters reported. His defence in the Boston trial maintained that denial: trial coverage by Al Jazeera reported that his lawyers argued the prosecution relied on eyewitness accounts that emerged decades after the genocide, questioned identifications made after witnesses were shown his photograph repeatedly, and noted he had not previously been implicated in post-genocide proceedings, including the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and Rwanda's gacaca community courts.
Background: why a 1994 genocide is tried in a Boston courtroom in 2026
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda lasted roughly 100 days, during which the hard-line Hutu regime and allied militias killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The United States has repeatedly prosecuted people found living in the US who are accused of concealing a role in it — not usually for the killings themselves, which happened abroad, but for the lies told to get into the country, to gain citizenship, or, as here, in testimony in an American courtroom. Teganya's own 2019 immigration fraud trial in Boston is what put Nshimiye on the witness stand — and it is that sworn testimony, given in a U.S. court, that the Boston jury has now found was perjury.
What happens next
Sentencing is scheduled for January 26, according to the U.S. Attorney's spokesperson cited by Reuters; the Justice Department had not, in the reporting available at publication, announced a sentencing guideline range or a government recommendation. Trial coverage noted that a conviction in a case of this kind can also expose a naturalized citizen to citizenship-revocation proceedings, but no such step was announced in the verdict reporting. For Ohio's and Massachusetts' immigrant communities alike, the case is a reminder of how far back U.S. courts will reach: testimony given in 2019, about events in 1994, decided by a Boston jury in 2026.
Sources: Reuters, "Ohio man convicted in US of lying about role in Rwandan genocide," October 28, 2026; U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, case 1:24-cr-10071-FDS filing (govinfo); Al Jazeera trial-opening coverage, October 2026, as carried by Radar Africa and Kumasi City.