By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post

An Ethiopian judge handed life sentences instead of the death penalty to 30 of the country’s top political opposition leaders Monday in a trial the prisoners have called a sham.

The defendants were among an estimated 30,000 people arrested in a widespread crackdown on opposition supporters following Ethiopia’s 2005 elections, when the opposition made major gains despite accusations that the vote was flawed.

While most of those arrested were released after an international outcry, the top leadership of Ethiopia’s main opposition party, along with journalists, a 76-year old professor and the elected mayor of Addis Ababa, have remained locked up in a dingy prison on the outskirts of the capital. One woman, a journalist, gave birth in jail.

The judge in the 14-month trial threw out charges of attempted genocide, but the prisoners were convicted last month of charges including “outrage against the constitution” and “inciting armed opposition.” The prosecution had recommended the death penalty.

In addition to giving the 30 prisoners life sentences, the judge stripped the defendants of their right to vote and to run for office. Five other prisoners were given life terms in absentia.

Eight other prisoners were given terms of one to 18 years, and the trial will continue for 10 prisoners who have chosen to present a defense, which the others had refused.

“I certainly am relieved that the death penalty has been removed,” said Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.), who has sponsored a bill calling for the unconditional release of all Ethiopian political prisoners. “But I would hope the government would go a step further and release the prisoners. They have paid a price for what they felt was simply expressing political views.”

Amnesty International said the jailed opposition leaders were “prisoners of conscience.”

While Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had accused the opposition leaders of inciting violent protests following the elections, a government report later found that the protesters were unarmed and that Ethiopian security authorities had used excessive force, spraying crowds with bullets, targeting protesters with sharpshooters and hunting others down in their homes.

At least 193 people were killed during the crackdown, and autopsies showed that some victims had single bullet wounds to the head, according to the report.

Even as the prisoners’ trial has carried on, U.S. officials have been negotiating behind the scenes for the prisoners’ release — efforts that some of their relatives said were compromised because of Ethiopia’s alliance with the United States in fighting terrorism in the Horn of Africa. The State Department supported Ethiopia’s decision in December to invade neighboring Somalia and oust an Islamic movement, accused of having ties to al-Qaeda, that had taken control in the capital city, Mogadishu, and other major towns.

At various times in the past two months, a deal between the Ethiopian government and the prisoners seemed imminent, only to fall through. Meles has made various offers for the prisoners’ release in return for some form of apology or acceptance of responsibility for the election-year violence.

The prisoners had rejected most of those offers.

The case of Ethiopia’s imprisoned opposition leaders is only part of what U.S. officials, human rights advocates and the Ethiopian opposition say is a broader pattern of repression that continues across the country and is now occurring inside Somalia, where Ethiopian troops and their Somali allies are battling an insurgency.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian security officials have continued to arrest and harass people suspected of supporting the opposition, according to U.S. officials. And in Ethiopia’s ethnically Somali Ogaden region, villages have been burned, people arrested and tortured and some killed on suspicion that they supported a militant opposition group known as the Ogaden Liberation Front, according to the group Human Rights Watch and U.S. officials.

“The Ethiopian government needs to start reducing these major barriers,” said Payne. “These political problems certainly impact on the development economically and also in good governance, which the country needs.”

Special correspondent Kassahun Addis in Addis Ababa contributed to this report.

.