Another side to the story of Ken Ngombwa

I got to know Gervais (Ken) Ngombwa about 18 years ago, right after he and his family immigrated to Cedar Rapids from a refugee camp in Tanzania. Our church (Westminster Presbyterian) had sponsored them coming to Cedar Rapids and it was our job to help this large family find a home and employment. The oldest children were in their teens or early 20s and the youngest was about 4 years old. Also we needed to help them learn English as none of them spoke anything but Kinyarwanda at that time. Our church, including pastor Herb Isenberg, worked hard and they responded by learning fast and by working hard.

Ken and his wife Antoinette got jobs working at the Sheraton Hotel. In a short time Ken had earned 'employee of the year,” an honor that was repeated several years in a row. They managed to save $8,400 to pay back the government for the family's flight from Africa to Cedar Rapids.

I got to know them in church, which they seldom, if ever, missed attending. I remember Ken saying to me he was surprised that our service only lasted an hour. Where he was raised in Rwanda, church lasted most of Sunday including a lunch and playing games with the children outside. The family read their Bibles in Kinyarwanda most of the service, since they couldn't understand much of the sermon.

Over the years the children learned English quickly and were active in Sunday school and youth groups. In time, the entire family earned their citizenship, except for a 16-year-old who was born here. Two of the children went on to earn master's degrees and one is working on his doctorate in Industrial Engineering. Gervais wanted all his children to be well educated since he never really had the chance. He taught them to obey the law and be good citizens.

I got more closely involved with Ngombwa's family after they had a fire in their house and Ken and the family were being investigated. I couldn't believe that such a good, hard working family could be in trouble. Had I known more about what had happened to them at that time and the conditions they faced during the genocide in Rwanda I might have better understood their plight. I believe now that the terror they lived through, seeing their friends and neighbors slaughtered, was still very much in their thoughts and minds. I think it must be like our soldiers coming back from the battlefield with PTSD: Nightmares haunting them and still living in fear that, for no good reason, someone might want to kill them or take them back to what they left behind in Rwanda.

Then, my friend Ken - a good-natured, loving father now with eight children and eight grandchildren, a guy who loved to laugh and enjoy his family and friends, and be a good citizen of his adopted country - was taken away, not because of the fire or anything he did in the U.S., but because of what was perceived as fraud in documents he signed to get his family out of the United Nations-sponsored refugee camp which was being overrun with disease and famine.

These charges seemed totally out of character for this man and this family that I knew. I was determined to learn more. I went to every trial, every hearing and many family meetings. I interviewed several refugees who came through the same camp and experienced many of the same problems as the Ngombwa family. Some live here in Cedar Rapids and others are in Minneapolis, Boston and even Canada. I talked with some of his neighbors who were brought over here for the trial as character witnesses. I have studied films and documentaries of the Rwandan genocide.

I have worked side-by-side with the family to rebuild their house, tearing out carpet and sheetrock and getting it back to a livable condition. I had a lot of help from the family and our church and other friends. The insurance would not pay for anything, because of the suspicion of arson. The more I work with the family, the more I respect them.

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Gervais Ngombwa was born in 1960 in Rwanda, in central Africa. His father was of the Hutu tribe and his mother from the Tutsi minority tribe. Although Gervais was one of several brothers and sisters he was taken out of school at the third-grade level and put to work on the family farm. This was a small farm of a few acres. They had some cattle and mostly raised food for their family. Gervais was a good worker and when he grew up he took over the farm. He and his wife Antoinette (also a Tutsi) added a small grocery business to market their farm merchandise and some clothing. The neighbors supported the small business and also liked to drop in for a chat. Their business grew to where they actually could afford a pickup truck and a TV set (the only one in the neighborhood). They 'adopted” three children, one from a previous relationship, one from a brother who could not support a child and one from a sister for the same reason. (In Rwanda it was common for a family to help family members in this way and it had the same effect as legal adoption in this country). In addition, Gervais and Antoinette began having children of their own. This was a very happy marriage. They both loved their children and all of the children love them.

Suddenly, this all changed on April 6, 1994, with the political uprising caused by someone shooting down a plane and killing the President of Rwanda and the president of Burundi. The president was a Hutu and the Hutus naturally placed the blame on the millions of Tutsis in Rwanda. Over the next 100 days nearly a million people died in horrible ways, mostly Tutsis, but also those of mixed heritage and some Hutus suspected of harboring the enemy. The Ngombwa family stayed inside their house and barred their doors, fearing for their lives. Sometime within a week after the plane went down, in the middle of the night, Ken and his family sneaked out the back of the house through a small courtyard and managed to melt into the jungle with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. During the escape, one of the children was hit by shrapnel from a grenade, which is there to this day.

For the next 10 days or more they crept through the jungle at night, avoiding the many roadblocks that had been set up; afraid of being captured. They slept in the daytime. They drank water from mud holes and ate whatever they could find on the trees and bushes. They finally made it to the Congo and eventually to Tanzania where many thousands of refugees had gathered in a UN camp. They stayed there for a while, but even that camp eventually became unsafe for those of mixed heritage and the UN moved them into a camp of a few thousand refugees with similar heritage. They remained there for four years until the UN again intervened, this time because of poor conditions in the camp - where food was scarce and diseases like HIV, TB and Malaria were spreading.

The UN and immigration officials from Norway, Canada, Australia and the U.S., tested the refugees for these diseases and immediately vetted the Ngombwa family for the U.S. The vetting included asking Gervais questions, writing his answers down and having him sign the paperwork for the family. The papers were written in English, but the UN provided interpreters. Unfortunately, the interpreters could only speak Tanzanian or Swahili, which is not like Kinyarwanda, which Gervais could have understood.

Eighteen years after Gervais and his family entered the U.S., he was charged with four counts of immigration violations and fraud. It seems the documents he'd been told to sign - the documents that had enabled him and his family to escape the filth and disease of a crowded refugee camp and peacefully continue to raise a family and make a home in Cedar Rapids - contained statements that weren't true.

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Today, Ken is in jail. He has been there since January. His hard-earned U.S. citizenship was revoked.

At Ken's trial, prosecutors presented evidence that he made false statements about his family relationships, arguing that he did so to mislead authorities and get his application approved. They brought in immigration officials to testify against him. But I wonder whether those officials feared for their jobs. I wonder if even well-meaning immigration workers trying to save families from a sick and struggling refugee camp would admit it if they'd encouraged refugees to sign papers written in English and translated by people who spoke languages they didn't understand.

I don't know the answers to these questions. At trial, Ken's court-appointed attorney didn't ask them. The jury did not believe Ken's testimony that he could not read the paperwork that he'd been asked to sign.

Meanwhile, in Rwanda Ken was convicted - in absentia, without a lawyer or any representation - of participating in the genocide by a Gacaca court presided over by five community members (as many as four of whom could, by their law, be illiterate) who had two weeks of training before being appointed judges. This is what passes for a court in Rwanda now, since most of the lawyers and judges in the country were killed along with others of the wealthy class. Most of the judges are Hutus, since most Tutsis were killed in the genocide. Townspeople voted on his fate.

Here in Cedar Rapids, a jury found him guilty of one count of unlawfully procuring or attempting to procure naturalization or citizenship; one count of procuring citizenship to which he was not entitled; one count of conspiracy to unlawfully procure citizenship; and one count of making a materially false statement to agents of the Department of Homeland Security.

Ken has not been sentenced yet, but may be any day now. Ken's conviction in Rwanda, which was not allowed in the jury trial, is center stage in his sentencing. The prosecution brought in via Skype Dr. Phil Clarke who has written a book about the Gacaca system. What I found interesting about his testimony, besides the fact that he appeared to be trying to sell his book throughout his of testimony, is that he called back after the hearing was over to declare that he had erred in some of his knowledge of the system. Apparently he didn't know the language, and had been relying on interpreters that had been supplied by the Rwandan government.

And so it appears Gervais Ken Ngombwa has been convicted of illiteracy. For that crime, he could get 30 years in a U.S. prison or deported back to the country he fled two decades ago. There is even discussion that some of his family members may also lose citizenship and face deportation.

The family has little funds although some of the children are grown and educated and working hard to pay for attorney's fees. A fund has been set up at Westminster Presbyterian Church (for benefit of Ken Ngombwa) to help with expenses. They do hope to appeal his sentence. We have also written letters to Senators and Congressmen and to President Barack Obama to beg for a Presidential pardon. Since the president can and has been granting pardons to many prisoners, we hope this one meets his criteria and that once again, Ken will have his freedom and citizenship.

' Bill Moss, of Cedar Rapids, is a retired businessman and member of Westminster Presbyterian Church.