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Lazare Kobagaya might be a cold-blooded killer who ordered neighbors slaughtered and their homes burned.
Or he might be a peaceful, religious man who protected those neighbors from the genocide sweeping Rwanda in 1994.
Jurors heard one version of Kobagaya from a federal prosecutor and the other from his defense Friday, as his trial began in a Wichita courtroom.
"It is a case about how he lied, and lied, and lied again, about one of the worst atrocities in world history," prosecutor Christina Giffin told jurors in her opening remarks.
How did an 84-year-old man come to trial in Wichita over an ethnic civil war in Africa 17 years ago?
Kobagaya is charged with providing false information on immigration and U.S. citizenship papers when he moved to Kansas.
Federal prosecutors say he listed himself as living in another African country in 1994, when more than 500,000 people died in Rwanda within 100 days.
But Giffin said Kobagaya was in a small village in southern Rwanda, leading members of the Hutu ethnic group in deadly attacks on their Tutsi neighbors.
Defense attorney Melanie Morgan said Kobagaya was trying to escape the country, and its violence, from 1993 to 1995. Hobbled by poor health, Morgan said Kobagaya spent that time trying to get back to a daughter he had left years earlier in Burundi, traveling through Zaire and Tanzania.
"You will hear from a Tutsi woman who will tell you he protected her and her son," Morgan said.
Giffin said Kobagaya helped organize attacks on Tutsi neighbors in the small province of Birambo in the Nyakizu region of southern Rwanda.
Kobagaya ordered a man to go kill another man, Giffin told the jury. When the man refused, Kobagaya stabbed him in the leg. The man consented and committed murder, the prosecutor said.
Giffin also said Kobagaya led the burning of more than a dozen Tutsi houses, then pushed a charge up Mount Nyakizu, where hundreds of Tutsi's had gone to escape the genocide.
"Hundreds were killed," she said.
Morgan said her client couldn't walk without a cane, much less charge up the highest mountain in that region.
Kobagaya even ordered the killing of Tutsi women who were married to Hutu men.
Morgan contended that Kobagaya himself was married to a Tutsi, and they had 11 children together.
"Lazare had never persecuted anyone," Morgan said. "He had protected a Tutsi woman."
Kobagaya's name had never surfaced as part of the genocide until after he testified for a neighbor charged with similar crimes in Finland, Morgan said.
Former Baptist minister Francois Bazaramba was tried and convicted of crimes against humanity in Finland. Last summer, he was sentenced to life in prison.
During his case, Bazaramba's lawyer came to the U.S. to interview former Rwandans. During that interview, Kobagaya said he didn't know Bazaramba had participated in the genocide and gave video testimony in Bazaramba's defense.
That's when the case began to build against Kobagaya, Morgan said.
Giffin said Kobagaya and Bazaramba planned and led the killings in Birambo.
U.S. Senior District Judge Monti Belot told jurors that this case, more than others he has presided over, will weigh heavily on witness testimony.
"Your principle duty is going to be to listen to the witnesses and weigh their testimony," Belot told the jury, adding that many witnesses do not speak English and are likely to be uncomfortable in strange surroundings.
Both sides brought more than 50 witnesses from Africa to testify in Kansas.
A spokeswoman from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Chicago said that extra ICE agents have been assigned to Wichita to help with security during the trial.
"You will hear from the men who carried out the violence," Giffin said.
Morgan called the prosecution's witnesses killers who fabricated information to get out of Rwanda's prisons, where they starved and languished in squalid conditions.
The witnesses are also being paid weekly witness fees and expenses, which are rich by Rwandan standards, Morgan said, questioning their motivation.
"We do not call these witnesses lightly," Giffin said. "And they will only be in this country for the duration of this trial."
The trial is expected to last two or more months.
Giffin said after Kobagaya orchestrated the killing of men, women and children and the burning of their homes, he came to America.
"He walked away," Giffin said.
Morgan said Kobagaya moved to Wichita to join his family, not to escape punishment for war crimes.
"You will hear Lazare Kobagaya has always been loving, hard-working, God-fearing and peaceful," his lawyer said.
He answered truthfully on his immigration and citizenship forms, Morgan said.
"As an American citizen, Lazare Kobagaya deserves the presumption of innocence.
"But he doesn't need it," Morgan said, "because he is innocent."
