Ethiopia's top judge to seek asylum in Britain

Xan Rice, East Africa correspondent
Tuesday November 7, 2006
The Guardian

Ethiopia's leading judge is to seek asylum in the UK after receiving threats from the government.

Teshale Aberra, the supreme court's president, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme yesterday that "continued harassment" from President Meles Zenawi's regime had caused him to flee the country. He said the government was as bad as that of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Marxist dictator toppled by Mr Meles.

"The difference is these guys are wise," Mr Aberra said. "These people kill whoever they like and then ask: 'Who killed them?'"

Mr Aberra's comments are the latest in a series of damning allegations made against Mr Meles, who has long enjoyed favoured status among western leaders.

Wolde-Michael Meshesha, another top judge who was responsible for carrying out an investigation into the killing of protesters after last year's elections, recently fled to Europe. In his report into the deaths, Mr Meshesha said that police had killed 193 people, far more than had been previously acknowledged.

He claimed that he had been pressured to alter his findings, and that he had received death threats.

The protesters had claimed Mr Meles rigged the election. But the government denied this, and accused the opposition of fomenting the unrest. Tens of thousands of people were rounded up and sent to jail. More than 100 leading opposition politicians, including the top echelon of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy, are on trial for charges including treason and genocide. Amnesty International has described them as "prisoners of conscience".

Two of the accused, Daniel Bekele of the NGO Action Aid and Netsanet Demissie, who works for a local human rights group, said yesterday that they had been "psychologically tormented" in jail. Alemayehu Zemedkun, the prosecutor originally charged with leading the case for the state, sought asylum in the US in September after failing to convince the government to drop it due to lack of evidence.

Although Britain cut direct budgetary aid to Ethiopia after last year's clampdown, the international community's reaction has been limited - something that perplexes many in the capital, Addis Ababa, where Mr Meles is deeply unpopular.

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