THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
A former member of a Marxist group that seized control of Ethiopia in the 1970s in a bloody purge known as the Red Terror apologized Thursday for the regime’s many crimes but denied personal responsibility.
In a dramatic confrontation with survivors in a Dutch courtroom, 63-year-old Eshetu Alemu accepted blame for the crimes of the Marxist rulers known as the Dergue nearly 40 years ago but insisted he did not carry out the crimes for which Dutch prosecutors hold him responsible.
“I would apologize on my knees to these victims and, through them, to all of Ethiopia,” Alemu said.
But, addressing allegations that he was responsible for the torture and murder of political prisoners in the western province of Gojam in 1978, he told judges: “I was not there.”
His emotional comments came in response to statements by survivors of his alleged crimes and people who lost family members.
One survivor, Worku Damena Yifru, citing witnesses, told judges that Alemu personally ordered the summary execution of dozens of prisoners in a church inside the prison compound in August 1978 and told other prisoners to dump their bodies in a mass grave.
He said Alemu checked the names of inmates summoned to the church before “special forces knocked down the prisoners and killed them by strangulation.”
Yifru said that as a survivor, “I feel I have a solemn duty to seek justice on behalf of all victims of that wanton, inhuman killing ordered by Mr. Alemu.”
Alemu, a longtime resident and citizen of the Netherlands, is charged with war crimes including involvement in torturing prisoners to death under the 1974-1991 Dergue regime. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted.
He admitted being a member of the Dergue, the group led by former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who has lived in exile in Zimbabwe since being driven from power. Mengistu was convicted in absentia in 2006 of genocide and later sentenced to death.
Some experts say 150,000 university students, intellectuals and politicians were killed in a nationwide purge by Mengistu’s regime, though no one knows for sure how many suspected opponents were killed. Human Rights Watch has described the 1977-78 Red Terror campaign as “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa.”
Presiding Judge Renckens, center, opens the court session in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017, in the case against a Dutch national of Ethiopian descent for alleged war crimes committed during the 1970’s regime in Ethiopia. Sebene Ademe, who now lives in Washington, D.C. , holds up photographs of her brother Belachew Ademe, a 32-year-old high school director who disappeared under the 1970s Red Terror regime of former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, outside the court room in The Hague Monday oct. 30, 2017. Belachew Ademe is listed as one of 75 prisoners ordered killed in 1978 by Eshetu Alemu, who went on trial Monday in The Hague charged with war crimes in the 1970s in Ethiopia. Alemu denies the charges. Presiding Judge Renckens, center, opens the court session in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017, in the case against a Dutch national of Ethiopian descent for alleged war crimes committed during the 1970’s regime in Ethiopia. Sebene Ademe, who now lives in Washington, D.C. , holds up photographs of her brother Belachew Ademe, a 32-year-old high school director who disappeared under the 1970s Red Terror regime of former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, outside the court room in The Hague Monday oct. 30, 2017. Belachew Ademe is listed as one of 75 prisoners ordered killed in 1978 by Eshetu Alemu, who went on trial Monday in The Hague charged with war crimes in the 1970s in Ethiopia. Alemu denies the charges.
Sebene Ademe, who now lives in Washington, D.C. , holds up photographs of her brother Belachew Ademe, a 32-year-old high school director who disappeared under the 1970s Red Terror regime of former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, outside the court room in The Hague Monday oct. 30, 2017. Belachew Ademe is listed as one of 75 prisoners ordered killed in 1978 by Eshetu Alemu, who went on trial Monday in The Hague charged with war crimes in the 1970s in Ethiopia. Alemu denies the charges.
There are many of those like him who shed the blood of the cream puff of that country then. My own close relative was taken out of his home in a dead of the night and never seen again in the Chercher Mountains. His crime was a copy of the opposition paper they found in his bedroom when they came to search his residence and nothing else. No other prisoner under interrogation had implicacted him. What I heard later from his parents was his argument he had with another fellow Oromo who at time a rabid supporter of Mengistu organized in MEISON. They grew up in close proximity but ended up with different stance when it came to the Derg. His parents also told me that his antagonist was the one who told on him. Later on that same snitch ended up in prison but was not murdered by Mengistu. He was released and then fled to neighboring Djibouti. They also told me that he had joined the OLF there organizing and propagating in the Oromo refugees community for it. I have been trying to find that sob for years but no avail but who knows he may be walking around here, Europe or anyother place under a different identity. Or he is dead already. But my relative was not even given a dignified death. He was tossed out to wild animals or buried somewhere in the wilderness. It was only one Nole Oromo getting an Itu Oromo killed but an Oromo doing harm on another. I strongly suspect that there could many others who committed the same crime against humanity. The only reason they have been able to elude the dragnet can be because where they committed the crime was at small town and overtime potential witnessed have died away. I congratulate those who worked very hard to bring this demon to court. And once again I call upon those who are professionals in the business of international law to file a case at the same court against the current regime for killing prisoners of war in 1991-92. You have a living witness who was one of the top officials then by the name Gebru Asrat. He had given interviews about that. It is in the Geneva Convention that killing prisoners of war is a crime against humanity. That can be the best opportunity to expose the real nature of the regime. Defendant should be Sebhat Nega, the late PM Meles and his colleagues at the same echelon of EPRDF at the time when the crime was committed between 1991-93. The wanton killing of about 200 demonstrators can be added to the case.