U.S. Professor Is Accused of Genocide in Rwanda

U.S. Professor Is Accused of Genocide in Rwanda February 7, 2009 By IAN URBINA

TOWSON, Md. — A professor at a Maryland college has been accused of genocide in his home country, Rwanda, and faces deportation, federal immigration officials said Friday.

The professor, Leopold Munyakazi, 59, taught French at Goucher College in this city north of Baltimore until he was suspended with pay in December after the college learned that he had been indicted on murder and several genocide-related charges in Rwanda, according to court papers.

Dr. Munyakazi has denied the accusations, which stem from 1994, when more than 500,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in Rwanda after the plane of the president, a Hutu, was shot down as he returned from negotiating with Tutsi rebels. Dr. Munyakazi is Hutu.

“There are many details and nuances surrounding this case,” Sanford J. Ungar, the president of Goucher, said Friday. “And at this time, there is no evidence that would either convict or exonerate Dr. Munyakazi, or, if there is, I have not seen it.

“However, considering the seriousness of the allegations, I felt it to be in the best interests of the college community to remove Dr. Munyakazi from his teaching duties until we could investigate further.”

Dr. Munyakazi was arrested Tuesday at his home in Towson for overstaying his visa, said Brandon A. Montgomery, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman. Mr. Montgomery said that Dr. Munyakazi was released from custody on the condition that he wear a monitoring device and that he faced a deportation hearing in April.

Dr. Munyakazi did not respond on Friday to requests for comment. He has vehemently denied any involvement in genocide and has provided university officials with what he says is evidence that he helped many Tutsi flee Hutu killers.

Mr. Ungar said the indictment, which claims that Dr. Munyakazi was directly involved in genocide, was apparently prepared in 2006.

University officials also pointed out that the indictment was prepared a month after Dr. Munyakazi gave a controversial talk in Delaware while he was a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey. In that speech, Dr. Munyakazi questioned the Rwandan government’s official account of events during the genocide.

“I refer to it as civil war, not genocide; it was about political power,” Dr. Munyakazi said in that speech, according to a University of Delaware news release from October 2006. “Ethnicity is not really understood about Rwanda. In Rwanda there are no tribes. There are social groups. They are one single people.” A Goucher spokeswoman, Kristen Keener, said Mr. Ungar consulted with an expert on genocide, Alison Des Forges, who is a senior adviser to the Africa program at Human Rights Watch, before deciding to suspend Dr. Munyakazi.

According to college officials, Ms. Des Forges said she did not find the indictment convincing and especially doubted its claim that Dr. Munyakazi organized a militia associated with a party opposed to the party with which he was affiliated.

But Ms. Keener said the charges were too severe not to suspend Dr. Munyakazi.

Max Temkin, 22, a senior philosophy major at Goucher, said the matter was “coming up in classes and in the cafeteria, but mostly students are keeping a wait-and-see attitude.”

“Most agree he should have been suspended,” Mr. Temkin continued, “but they aren’t passing judgment beyond that.”