Ethiopian war criminals who can leave the Italian embassy after almost 30 years

by

Berhanu Bayeh and Addis Tedla, two senior officials of the former Mengistu military regime in Ethiopia, who had been sentenced to death for war crimes, received evidence from an Ethiopian federal court, according to a diplomatic source with knowledge of the situation.
They were sentenced to death in absentia in 2008, along with former Soviet-backed Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, for their participation in the torture and execution of thousands of people, which meant genocide.
Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde commuted his death sentence to life in prison on December 19. The federal court voted two to one in favor of their conditional grant on Christmas Eve, after Ethiopian Attorney General Gedion Timothewos asked for clemency because of their old age.

The two men are awaiting the official transmission of the sentence from the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, at which point they will leave.

Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Emanuela Claudia Del Re thanked Ethiopia for providing the evidence.

“An old page of history is definitely transformed,” she said in a tweet months. “Italy and Ethiopia share a long and prosperous future together.”

“Life is a human right – the decision to probate former government officials is in line with human rights obligations and commitments,” said Daniel Bekele, chief commissioner of Ethiopia’s human rights commission, which describes itself as an “independent national ”Institution. “It is also a symbolic indicator of Ethiopia’s commitment to turning a page on one of the saddest chapters in its recent history.”

Mengistu was the president of Derg, a communist party that came to power in Ethiopia after a coup in 1974. For a time, Bayeh served as Derg’s foreign minister, and Tedla was head of the defense staff.

In 1977 and 1978, Derg committed numerous human rights violations during what became known as the Red Terror. Several thousand people – mostly school and university students and young intellectuals suspected of opposing the Derg – were killed on the streets and in prisons in Addis Ababa and other cities in the center of the country, according to Amnesty International.

The same regime was controlled during the drought and famine of the 1980s, which claimed about 800,000 lives.

When the regime fell in 1991, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front moved to the capital, Bayeh, now in the 1970s, and Tedla, in the early 1980s, sought refuge in the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa. Since May 26, 1991, they have been locked inside the walls of the complex, the source told CNN.

Their 29-year stay in diplomatic asylum is considered to be the longest, lasting 22 years longer than Julian Assange’s long-awaited visit to Ecuador’s embassy in London.

At least 600 civilians killed in northern Ethiopia massacre, rights commission says
They never had a lawyer, but sought asylum at the embassy, ​​which was never granted. However, the Italian embassy accepted the two men because of the country’s opposition to the death penalty.

They spent their closed days in the outside world walking on the small grounds of the complex and watching television, the diplomatic source said.

Two other men, Tesfay Gebre Kidan and Hailu Yimenu, also took refuge at the embassy in 1991. Yimenu committed suicide a few years later, while Kidan died in an accident in 2004. The source told CNN that other Details of Kidan’s death could not be released to the press, but he said it did not involve either Bayeh or Tedla.

.Source