The High Court in Kigali has postponed to December 18, the appeal hearing on the provisional release request filed by Genocide convict Ahmed Napoleon Mbonyunkiza, who was deported from the United States of America in March.

The hearing, initially scheduled for October 13, was postponed at Mbonyunkiza’s request after he informed the court that his lawyer was unable to attend due to illness. The court accepted the request and granted the postponement.

Mbonyunkiza is appealing against the Nyarugenge Intermediate Court’s decision to remand him pending trial. He is seeking provisional release while pursuing a retrial to challenge a 2007 Gacaca court decision that convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

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According to the law, upon his deportation back to the country after being convicted in absentia he had 30 days to seek retrial for his sentence.

While in the USA, he had served a 15-year prison sentence for sexual assault-related offenses.

Born on July 15, 1968, Mbonyunkiza lived in the Muhima area of Kigali before fleeing the country. The Nyakabanda Gacaca Court convicted him for his involvement in the Genocide against the Tutsi.

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Records indicate that Mbonyunkiza was a senior member of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), the party that orchestrated the Genocide.

At just 24 years old, in 1992, he was elected to the national executive committee of the MRND after rising through the party’s youth structures in Nyarugenge District.

Witness testimonies and records from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where he once appeared as a witness, describe him as a politically well-connected person.