https://news.vice.com/article/two-convicted-ethiopian-war-criminals-have-been-sheltering-in-an-italian-embassy-for-24-years
AFRICA
Two Convicted Ethiopian War Criminals Have Been Sheltering in an
Italian Embassy for 24 Years
By Sally Hayden
October 12, 2015 | 1:39 pm
It's been nearly 25 years since Ethiopia's Soviet-backed Derg regime
was ousted. As a coalition of rebel forces approached capital city
Addis Ababa on May 27, 1991, four senior ministers — accused of
ordering mass killings — used the darkness of night to creep into the
Italian embassy.
What followed is a tale of suicide, murder, and decay.
The reaction of the guard who first met the group at the gate, the
identity of the person who ushered them in, is uncertain. What VICE
News can be sure of is that two of the former Derg officials remain
there, while the other two died inside the high walls of the embassy.
In 1993, one of them — former acting Prime Minister Hailu Yimenu —
killed himself.
Eleven years later came the death of former Minister of Defense and
Military Commander in Eritrea Tesfaye Gebre Kidan — allegedly murdered
during a "brawl" by fellow official Berhanu Bayeh, former foreign
affairs minister and close supporter of Derg leader Mengistu Haile
Mariam.
Making Julian Assange's three years in London's Ecuadorian embassy
seem like a short vacation, VICE News has confirmed that Bayeh, along
with former Derg Chief of General Staff Addis Tedla, remains inside
the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa to this day.
Fifteen years into their stay, the remaining two men were reportedly
sentenced to death for their role in the killings. In 2011, 23 death
sentences for former Derg officials were commuted to life
imprisonment. However, the men in the embassy — now in their 70s —
remain in self-imposed incarceration, but otherwise unpunished.
The Italian embassy in Addis Ababa. (Photo by Sally Hayden)
In a statement issued in 2004, Italy said they would not hand the two
former Derg officials over and said that the Ethiopian authorities are
well aware of the position of Italy on this issue.
Eleven years later, Italian officials have again confirmed this stance
to VICE News.
"Given the nature of the issue, we have always preferred not to grant
interviews with journalists, rather we have privileged to have an open
channel of communication with human rights institutions and NGOs,"
First Secretary Giuliano Fragnito said in an email.
"I confirm that within the embassy compound there are two former
senior Derg officials and that the Italian government cannot force
them to go out from the compound (which according to international
customary law is Italian territory) as long as they risk capital
punishment. This obligation is enshrined in our legal system."
Fragnito also told VICE News that the two Ethiopians had never been
granted asylum, and that they didn't have a lawyer as far as he was
aware. VICE News approached the Ethiopian government for a statement
on the case, but hasn't received a response.
Meanwhile, Tedla's wife and children have reportedly relocated to the
United States. In 2004, they appealed to the US to help him, though it
didn't appear to be an American priority at the time.
Approached for comment by VICE News, Felix Horne, Ethiopia and Eritrea
Researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said he wasn't following the
specifics of this case closely but noted that there would still be
"all kinds of due process concerns" if the men were to leave.
* * *
In the two-and-a-half decades since the men's self-imposed
incarceration began, Ethiopia has experienced rapid change. Saudi,
Yemeni, and Chinese investment is evident everywhere in the capital —
in the masses of half-finished concrete constructions outlined by
wooden scaffolding, in the suggestively named Ethio-China Friendship
Roundabout, in the increased number of upscale coffee cafes and
cocktail bars.
This is a conference city — the headquarters of the African Union, the
setting of the South Sudan peace talks, and the home of sub-Saharan
Africa's first electrified train service. A hotel room in Ethiopia's
capital costs many times the price of one in the country's more rural
areas.
Related: Ethiopians Call for Revenge on the Islamic State at Violent
Protest Over Mass Killing Video
These developments are reflected in economic measurements. Ethiopia is
expected to be the world's fastest growing economy in the four years
to 2017, according to the World Bank. However, advancement has come
with a price.
Labeled a "police state" by international political analysts,
Ethiopians are suspicious of any perception of freedom in their
country — whispering about censorship, tight control of the press, and
the "spying technology" that the government is rumored to have been
given by China.
In this year's election the ruling party won all 546 parliamentary
seats; in 2010 it received one seat less, but claimed 99.6 percent of
the total vote. Foreign media have referred to the government as a
"corrupt regime."
Local journalism is heavily controlled, with Ethiopia this year one of
the world's biggest jailers of journalists, according to HRW. US
President Barack Obama's visit earlier this year caused an outcry, as
human rights workers condemned him for legitimizing a questionable
leadership.
* * *
The aid and military support given to the Derg junta by the Soviet
Union meant Ethiopia was marked as a Cold War battleground.
Emperor Haile Selassie's government lost power in 1974, following a
famine. That was when the committee of military professionals, known
as the Derg, took over.
This group quickly ordered the execution, without trial, of 61
ex-officials of the ousted imperial government — a command that was
carried out on November 23, 1974.
Selassie himself was killed in 1975. The body of the king, who had
inspired a devotedfollowing, was buried under new ruler Mengistu Haile
Mariam's offices, some say beneath a toilet.
The Derg proceeded to enact a series of reforms, including
nationalizing rural land, banks, and insurance companies, and began a
program that sent tens of thousands of students to rural areas to
teach, thereby removing any revolt-ready youth from the centers of
power.
These acts were accompanied by a period of mass murder, named the
Ethiopian Red Terror in reference to the Red Terror of the Bolsheviks.
Many of the Derg's victims during this time were students who
supported the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP). Parents
of the dead were forced to pay militias the cost of the bullet in
return for their child's body.
The bones of a victim of the Derg regime on display in the "Red
Terror" museum in Addis Ababa. (Photo by Sally Hayden)
As many as 500,000 were killed during the Red Terror period between
1977 and 1978,according to estimates by Amnesty International.
While the violence eventually calmed down, the Derg's 10th anniversary
coincided with the1984 famine — itself publicized globally by Bob
Geldof and Live Aid and largely believed to have been exacerbated by
mismanagement.
After the Derg eventually lost power in 1991, the new Ethiopian
government conducted a 12-year-long war crimes trial which concluded
in 2007.
Described at the time as an "African Nuremberg," spectators traveled
hundreds of miles to see their former oppressors brought to justice.
Trials took place in the Ministry of Central Planning in Addis.
The Derg trials were unique because they were conducted domestically
in the local language of Amharic and with limited international
influence, and they possibly suffered as a result.
Lacking the credibility of an independent international tribunal, they
also ended up marred with allegations of unfair trials and human
rights abuses against prisoners — many of those charged were held in
pretrial detention for years until they were released because the
prosecution lacked the evidence to charge them.
While there were more than 100 Derg members, when the trials began in
1995 only 44 stood trial, including eight of the 12 members of the
standing committee. They stood accused of the murder of Selassie, of
the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, 59 members of the
imperial court, nearly 2,000 members of rival revolutionary groups or
supporters of the emperor, and charged with crimes against humanity
and genocide (for political reasons), aggravated homicide, abuse of
power, and unlawful detention.
Mengitsu himself was condemned in absentia. He has been in Zimbabwe
since May 21, 1991, after fleeing in an airplane under the pretext of
visiting a military training camp. The former leader was received as
an official guest of President Robert Mugabe and has since been
granted asylum. Zimbabwe said that this was repayment: Mengitsu and
the Derg regime aided Zimbabwe in its own "struggle for independence."
Mengistu still lives in a Harare suburb.
Names of victims are still being collected in the "Red Terror" museum
in Addis Ababa. (Photo by Sally Hayden)
Addis Ababa's "Red Terror" museum, located off historic Meskel Square
and reportedly home to a portrait of Karl Marx in the Derg days, holds
stacks of skeletons — some paired with names, photos, and belongings,
others methodically separated into glass boxes by bone type. Almost
all of the guides working in the museum — which opened in 2010 — were
tortured themselves and many still bear the marks, such as missing
toes, scars from burns, and lacerations inflicted by whips.
A visitor to the Red Terror museum is left with a feeling of horror,
but critics condemn the display as an over-simplification.
"A museum is set up after every president," one Addis Ababa University
music student said disparagingly outside the building, before
dismissing much of the exhibit as "propaganda."
"The museum tells a kind of simplified story of what the trials did
tell," said Jacob Wiebel, an academic who lectures in African history
at the University of Durham.
"[In the trials] the story that came out was much much messier. In the
museum the struggle of the Red Terror's urban victims is not clearly
differentiated from that of the guerrillas that formed today's
government."
Wiebel recently completed a PhD on the Ethiopian Red Terror period. On
the the subject of the fugitive Derg officials he said: "The one thing
that really intrigues me is the allegation that one of them murdered
the other one in the embassy, which no one has verified but if that
happened it's technically a murder on Italian soil that has had no
consequences."
Wiebel also commented on the Derg trials: "I think there was a lot of
goodwill and intentions but the funding and capacities of the
prosecutions was very below par. Most of the judges had been deposed
because they worked with the old regime. Small team, very little
money."
He added: "One of the frustrations was that less than 50 percent of
people who were sentenced were present."
Wiebel also noted that while Italy's reasoning for not forcing the men
out was avoiding the death penalty, many of the initial death
sentences given to Derg members have been reduced to life
imprisonment. "They'd go to jail for sure but it is highly unlikely
that they would get the death penalty," Wiebel said.
Italy colonized Eritrea and occupied Ethiopia — the impact of which is
still obvious. Most local restaurants will serve pasta and pizza,
putting spaghetti carbonara on the menu alongside traditional national
meat and vegetable dishes such as shiro, kitfo, and tibs.
Wiebel observed that the relationship between Italy and Ethiopia is
now "very cordial" and "centered on development and lots of
development assistance."
* * *
When VICE News visited the neighborhood of the Italian embassy in
September it was the tail end of rainy season, and thunder rumbled
overhead. A lengthy sloped road stretched along the land's left flank
for nearly half a mile. Children emerged from metal shelters to
stretch out a hand and cheekily ask the foreigner for money, while
teenage boys oblivious to the wet weather kicked a soccer ball. A baby
cried. Smoke rose above the corrugated iron sheets being used as walls
by the embassy's neighbours.
Signs on a side gate informed visitors in English, Italian, and
Amharic of the best way to apply for a study visa (make sure your
parents agree to fund your living costs) and the correct time that
Eritreans should arrive for appointments (8.30am on Tuesdays).
Towering trees loomed high above the embassy's barbed-wire topped
stone walls, and every entrance was watched closely by multiple CCTV
cameras.
Later, an Italian national living in Addis Ababa — who has been to the
embassy several times — told me she was "surprised but also not
surprised" to hear that former Derg ministers still lived inside. She
said the embassy itself though is rather unremarkable, and that
sometimes the diplomats hold horse-riding competitions.
"Our government has a lot of things they are hiding too. There are a
lot of things in our past that we do not know."
Related: Land Wars: Ethiopia Accused of Massacring Civilians to Clear
Way for Foreign Farms
Follow Sally Hayden on Twitter: _at_sallyhayd
Received on Tue Oct 13 2015 - 10:43:54 EDT