A <\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Her The Valerie “I Niyitegeka<\/span> She The During Joseph Yandagiye<\/span> Yandagiye<\/span> Later Yandagiye<\/span> Bazaramba<\/span> A woman whose husband and three young children were slaughtered during the 1994 Rwandan genocide cried Thursday as she identified from the witness stand the Kansas man she contends led a mob attack up a mountain where she and many others had sought refuge from the ethnic carnage that was sweeping Rwanda. Her account was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"byline":[277],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","byline-igihe-com-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":277,"name":"IGIHE.com Reporter","slug":"igihe-com-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":277,"name":"IGIHE.com Reporter","slug":"igihe-com-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwoman whose husband and three young children were slaughtered during the 1994
\nRwandan genocide cried Thursday as she identified from the witness stand the
\nKansas man she contends led a mob attack up a mountain where she and many
\nothers had sought refuge from the ethnic carnage that was sweeping Rwanda.<\/strong>
\naccount was the most emotional yet as the trial of Lazare<\/span> Kobagaya<\/span> entered its
\nfifth day of testimony in a federal courtroom in Wichita in the U.S<\/span>. The government is
\nseeking to revoke his U.S<\/span>. citizenship for allegedly lying to immigration
\nauthorities about his involvement in the genocide.
\n84-year-old Topeka man is charged with unlawfully obtaining U.S<\/span>. citizenship in
\n2006 with fraud and misuse of an alien registration card in a case prosecutors
\nhave said is the first in the United States requiring proof of genocide.
\nKobagaya<\/span> contends he is innocent.
\nNiyitegeka<\/span>, a Tutsi woman whose family farmed near Kobagaya\u2019s<\/span> village,
\nrecounted for jurors the events of April 15, 1994, when she, her husband,
\nAppolloni<\/span>, and their six children fled as mobs of Hutu<\/span> men burned Tutsi houses.<\/p>\n
\nwas OK for my house to be burned \u2014 as long as I am not dead,” she
\ntestified through a translator.
\ndetailed how she climbed \u2014 and at times crawled \u2014 up the steep, rocky mountainside
\nof Mount Nyakizu<\/span> with her youngest son strapped to her back. She described how
\nthe women and children gathered piles of stones for their men to throw as mobs
\nof Hutus<\/span> attacked.
\ntold jurors she was able to identify the elderly Kobagaya<\/span> as the leader of the
\nattacking mob because she recognized the way he walked and the cane he carried
\nthat day. She pointed at him in the courtroom : “He is there. He is the
\none.”
\ndefense tried to cast doubt on that identification by noting trees and other
\nobstructions on the mountain that day.
\nthe melee as the family fled the mountain in the ensuing days, Niyitegeka<\/span> was
\nseparated from her husband and three of her children. She testified she would
\nnever see them alive again. Their slain children\u2019s ages were 12, 10 and 8.
\nYandagiye<\/span>, a 76-year-old Hutu<\/span> farmer, testified about what happened to the
\nchildren and their father, who sought refuge at Yandagiye\u2019s<\/span> house. After taking
\nthem in, Yandagiye<\/span> went to run some errands. When he returned, he said he found
\na crowd of Hutus<\/span> had already surrounded his house.
\ntestified that when the crowd threatened him in an attempt to get into the
\nhouse, Appolloni<\/span> came out and told the mob : “Take me instead.”
\nalso told jurors he initially followed the mob that had taken Appolloni<\/span> and his
\nchildren, but turned back after they told him they would make him kill them
\nhimself if he continued to follow.
\nthat day, a group of Hutu<\/span> men came to get him too, Yandagiye<\/span> testified. It was
\nthen that he learned that Appolloni<\/span> and his children had been killed.
\ntestified that Kobagaya<\/span> told the mob that they should kill him too because he
\nhad sheltered Tutsis<\/span> in his house during a 1959 conflict. Yandagiye<\/span> said
\nanother community leader, Francois Bazaramba<\/span>, urged the crowd not to kill him
\nbut to punish Yandagiye<\/span> by making him buy beer, which he did.
\nis a former Rwandan pastor who was sentenced last year to life imprisonment by
\na Finnish court for committing genocide.