'No justice' for Red Terror
2004-02-23 19:27
Addis Ababa - Ethiopia's top human rights campaigner said here Monday that the government could not "deliver justice" in the genocide trial of former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and dozens of officers from his regime.
"That regime cannot deliver justice" because it is not "democratic", Mesfine Woldemariam, chair of the Ethiopian Human Rishts Council, told AFP as the trial was set to resume on Tuesday before the federal high court.
Mengistu and 65 other officials are charged with genocide and other crimes, including the murder of Emperor Haile Selasie and Orthodox Patriarch Abuna Tefelows, during the 1977-78 so-called "Red Terror" period which followed the ouster of emperor Haile Selassie by a marxist junta.
The defendants are also charged with ordering the killing of 1 823 people and a forced resettlement that led to the death of 100 000 others under the Marxist regime.
"At the beginnning, we have stated that if you have a trial for genocide, establish in Ethiopia a democratic system, and a genuine judiciary system," Woldemariam said.
"You can't do that when you have former terrorists in power, when they have incriminate people selectively," he said, referring to the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the former rebel leader who ended Mengistu's bloody rule.
Tens of thousands of Ethiopians were killed or disappeared during the two-year "Red Terror".
Mengistu himself was convicted in absentia after fleeing to Zimbabwe in 1991, where he has lived in exile ever since.
Nearly 5 200 former soldiers and communist activists are due to be tried by the courts.
Around 2 l200 are currently in prison in Ethiopia, but several of the key accused are to be or have been tried in absentia.
Last August, 33 former officials of the Mengistu regime, who are behind bars, wrote a letter to Zenawi begging for mercy from the Ethiopian people.
More than 500 people have been acquitted, and 600 are to be tried between January and September of this year. The Red Terror trials are due to be concluded in 2004, according to the Ethiopian judiciary.
- SAPA