Gervais Ngombwa
Survivors of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi have requested the US Federal Appeals Court to deport Gervais Ngombwa, 57; a businessman who was found guilty of Genocide offenses he committed in different areas of Bugesera District in 1994.
“It is absurd hearing that a Genocide perpetrator like Ngombwa is sentenced to only 15 years,” Nocodeme Kabano, President of Genocide Survivors Umbrella -Ibuka in Bugesera District, told KT Press on Saturday.
On Friday, the US Federal Appeals Court decided to uphold the 15 years imprisonment against Ngombwa over Genocide offences. They ruled that he serves his sentence in the US.
In March 2017, a U.S. District Senior Judge Linda Reade sentenced Ngombwa to 15 years in prison and revoked his citizenship for “one count of naturalization fraud; one count of conspiracy to unlawfully procuration of citizenship; and one count of making a materially false statement to agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Genocide survivors said Ngenzi was the butcher of Nyamata, the headquarters of Bugesera district and he personally supplied the killing tools to interahamwe.
“As a businessman in Nyamata and opinion leader in the then Gashora Commune, Ngombwa was among Genocide planners and perpetrators in Bugesera,” Kabano said.
“He was even the one who distributed machetes to killers.”
Kabano says Ngombwa was a member of the committee of Republican Democratic Movement (MDR-Power) in Bugesera, a political party that participated in the Genocide against Tutsi.
He was among Interahamwe militias who led an attack on Ntarama Church and killed more than 5,000 Tutsis who had sought refuge there.
While the US Federal Appeals Court Judge said he did not err in considering Ngombwa’s participation in the Genocide against Tutsi in the ruling, Ngombwa had been sentenced to life imprisonment by “Nyamata Gacaca Court” for genocide crimes.
During the ruling there were evidences that Ngombwa remains under a 2014 indictment in Rwanda on charges of genocide, extermination as a crime against humanity and murder as a crime against humanity.
The court had a resolve understanding of the matter from the fact that he told a number of lies” in the course of gaining entry into the United States and for citizenship.
Ngombwa’s lies to the court include among others the claim that he is brother to Faustin Twagiramungu, former Prime Minister of Rwanda and currently an opposition figure, and other family relationships in an attempt to get his application approved for relocation as a refugee in 1998 and to later obtain citizenship.
Meanwhile, according to court records checked by the Gazette, an Iowa City based media, Ngombwa will be deported to Rwanda after serving his federal prison term, but Kabona say “it is absurd Genocide victims would in that case wait for 15 years more to get justice.”
“Today’s decision marks the successful conclusion of a remarkable case; one that helped bring a measure of justice to a criminal participant in a horrible chapter in modern human history,” U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said in statement after Ngombwa’s sentencing.
