War Crimes Suspect Walks Into Maine

Rwandan believed to have been complicit in massacre is arrested near Canada border
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 8, 2014 4:23 AM CDT
War Crimes Suspect Walks Into Maine
This photo provided by the Canada Border Services Agency shows Jean Leonard Teganya, 42.   (Canada Border Services Agency)

A man suspected of involvement in the Rwandan genocide was arrested in a Maine town after apparently strolling over the nearby Canadian border. Jean Leonard Teganya, 42, is now in US custody and expected to be shipped back to Rwanda. In 2011, Teganya was ordered deported from Canada after a court decided he had been complicit in the massacre of hundreds of Tutsis at the hospital where he was an intern, reports the Bangor Daily News. His application for refugee status in Canada was rejected, and a treaty forbids him from now seeking it in America unless he has relatives living in the US.

At the hearing where it ruled against him, Canada's refugee board said it had to ask itself whether Teganya's "passivity in the face of the massacres is not equivalent to endorsing the policies and methods of the party in power." Teganya's father was a member of the ruling party at the time and is now serving a 22-year sentence in Rwanda, reports the CBC. Teganya is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and officials say that because Canada has already ordered for him to be deported, he will probably be sent straight to Rwanda instead of back to Canada. (An older war crimes suspect died in the US last month on the eve of his extradition to Germany.)

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