/ 16 July 2001

10 ACQUITTED IN ETHIOPIA’S RED TERROR TRIAL

THE Ethiopian High Court has acquitted 10 men accused of genocide and crimes against humanity under the regime of ousted dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, the news agency ENA reported on Thursday. The men were accused of “torture and extra-judicial killings” while they were serving Mengistu’s Marxist regime. The court also handed out 22 guilty verdicts for the same charges and those guilty are awaiting sentencing. The trials are part of a series which began in 1994 of high-ranking officers for crimes committed largely during the “Red Terror” period of the late 1970s, during which tens of thousands of Ethiopians were killed or abducted. – AFP

–>