BALTIMORE ― Uncertainty surrounds the status of professor Leopold Munyakazi, who briefly taught French at Goucher College and was deported to Rwanda under international charges of genocide.
His attorney in Northern Virginia, Ofelia Calderon, doesn’t know where he is being held and whether he has an attorney or trial date.
“If there are not public eyes, then he’ll disappear like so many,” she said. “I doubt in a pleasant manner.”
Officials at the Rwandan embassy in Washington did not answer questions about Munyakazi, 67, who is accused of stoking ethnic violence in the genocide of 1994.
The paunchy, bespectacled linguist had sought asylum in the U.S. and challenged the deportation ruling against him for nearly a decade. He exhausted his last appeal to return to his family in Baltimore County and was deported Sept. 28, well after he was suspended from teaching at Goucher.
Federal authorities also were unable to say where Munyakazi is held in Rwanda and when he is scheduled for trial.
“We expect the government of Rwanda to ensure his human rights are protected while in detention,” said Noel Clay, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department.
