Authorities in the United States last week arrested a one Eric Tabaro Nshimiye, a 52-year old Rwandan who has for the last three decades evaded justice, to the agony of survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, especially those from Huye District.
Tabaro, who was a medical student at the then National University of Rwanda, was a notorious youth leader of MRND, the political party that masterminded the Genocide in which over a million innocent lives were mercilessly killed.
Also read New details emerge about Rwandan engineer arrested in US for Genocide
For 30 years, he lied to the US authorities about his role in the Genocide against the Tutsi where he had successfully disguised as an engineer at Goodyear, a US-based tyre manufacturer, where he rose through the ranks to become their principal engineer.
All the while, he had maintained a face of a 'good neighbour' in the State of Ohio, where he mowed neighbours lawns and other acts of good neighbourliness. Little did they know that amidst them was a man responsible of multiple deaths and rapes, tens of thousands of kilometres away.
Also read: Where are the 1,100 Genocide fugitives?
However, despite this façade of a successful career person and father of four, he still kept at heart his ties with the nefarious past.
In 2019, he appeared in court as a witness to defend Jean Leonard Teganya, a former classmate and now-convicted Rwandan genocide perpetrator who at the time faced removal from the US over his role in the Genocide against the Tutsi.
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He now faces a litany of charges including lying to US immigration authorities about his role in the Genocide and also faces perjury and obstruction of justice over his unsuccessful attempt to help his fellow Interahamwe militiaman Teganya to evade justice.
Also read Prosecutor: Teganya is a wanted Genocide suspect
Now Tabaro will be charged in the US and faces deportation to Rwanda after his conviction. In Rwanda, he will be charged for his role in the Genocide including the death of men, women, and children by striking them on the head with a nail-studded club (ubuhiri) and later hacking them to death with a machete.
He also faces the murders of a 14-year-old boy and of a man who used to work as a tailor at the university teaching hospital where he was in charge of sewing doctors' coats.
This is a reminder for other mass murderers who are roaming the world that the crimes they committed will not go unpunished irrespective of how far they run or how much hard they work to disguise themselves in communities where they live.
