Béatrice Munyenyezi, 54, sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Huye (south) for her role in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis. Conviction comes as the country commemorates 30 years of the genocide carried out by the extremist Hutu regime, leaving at least 800,000 dead.
She was deported in April 2021 from the United States, where she had just served a ten-year prison sentence for lying about her involvement in the genocide. Her case attracted the attention of American investigators while her mother-in-law Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former minister of the genocidal regime, and her husband Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, former local leader of the Interahamwe militia, were tried for crimes of genocide by the Tribunal International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. Both were sentenced toLife in prison in 2011. Their sentences were reduced to 47 years on appeal.