By Martin Fletcher | Times Online
HARARE, ZIMBABE – The former Ethiopian dictator who slaughtered opponents on an industrial scale in the so-called “Red Terror” is to face justice after 17 years being sheltered by Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe. [Why doesn’t Martin Fletcher describe Meles Zenawi in the same way? Meles has killed no less people in the past 17 years.]
With the country’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change due to enter a unity government with Zanu-PF next week, The Times has learnt that the extradition of Mengistu Haile Mariam is to be given priority. He faces the death penalty in his home country for his crimes.
Today, Nelson Chamisa, the MDC’s chief spokesman, told The Times that Mengistu’s case would be “high on the agenda” of the new administration. “Zimbabwe should not be a safe haven or resting place for serial human rights violators like Mr Mengistu. We can’t shelter purveyors of injustice,” he said.
Last year an Ethiopian kangaroo court sentenced the “Butcher of Addis” to be executed after convicting him of genocide in absentia, but Mr Mugabe flatly refused to extradite the man who helped to arm Zanu-PF’s guerrillas during Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war.
Instead, Mengistu continued to live in Zimbabwe as Mr Mugabe’s honored guest, dividing his time between a heavily guarded villa in a comfortable Harare suburb, a farm near the capital and a retreat on glorious Lake Kariba.
Suddenly, the future of one of Africa’s worst tyrants looks rather less assured. The MDC plans to use its Cabinet ministers, parliamentary majority and popular support to fight President Mugabe’s inevitable resistance. At stake was “the image and integrity of our country. We have to restore our glory and our dignity among the family of nations,” Mr Chamisa said. [Returning a political refugee to a regime that is accused of war crimes is not restoring one’s glory. MDC is proving to be nothing more than a puppet of the U.K. government and it’s double-tongued officials.]
Few Zimbabweans would shed tears if Mengistu, 71, was sent home to the gallows. Mr Mugabe has spent millions of dollars providing his fellow dictator with a government villa in a barricaded cul-de-sac in the suburb of Gun Hill, with round-the-clock protection by armed soldiers and any number of other benefits including the payment of substantial telephone bills — $15,000 in one instance.
In return Mengistu has advised the President on security issues and was allegedly the mastermind of Operation Murambatsvina in 2006 when security forces and Zanu-PF thugs razed the homes of 700,000 slum-dwellers regarded as MDC supporters.
Mengistu has plenty of experience in that field. He seized power after a military coup in 1974 that ended Emperor Haile Selassie’s 44-year rule and ushered in one of the bloodiest regimes Africa has known. In 1976 he mounted the “Red Terror” campaign against opponents of his Derg regime by standing in the centre of Addis Ababa, shouting: “Death to the counter-revolutionaries”, and smashing bottles filled with pigs’ blood to demonstrate the fate that awaited them.
Over the next few years more than half a million people are thought to have been killed in what Human Rights Watch called “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder ever witnessed in Africa”. Hit squads carried out summary executions. Militias strung opponents up from lampposts. Relatives had to pay a tax called “the wasted bullet” to retrieve the bodies of the dead. The victims included the former Emperor and numerous members of the Royal Family and Mengistu is said to have executed some of them himself.
He turned Ethiopia into a Marxist state, backed by the Soviet Union, and earned the sobriquet the “Black Stalin”. He created giant collective farms that had the same ruinous effect on agricultural production as Mr Mugabe’s land seizures in Zimbabwe and that helped to cause terrible famine.
His Soviet-armed military sought to crush an independence war in Eritrea and an uprising in Tigray province, but when the Soviet Union collapsed Mengistu lost his sponsors. In 1991 he fled to Zimbabwe as the Tigre People’s Liberation Front and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front surrounded Addis.
Washington asked Mr Mugabe to accept him to end the bloodshed.
In 1995 Mengistu narrowly survived an assassination attempt by two Eritreans as he took an afternoon stroll with his wife near Garvin Close, his Harare home. In court the men showed the scars of their torture by Mengistu’s henchmen, but both were imprisoned.
Otherwise Mengistu has maintained a low profile. Early on he was occasionally spotted in a shopping centre or restaurant, surrounded by guards and armed with a pistol. In 1998 he told a reporter who reached him by telephone that he was a “political refugee” who spent his time reading, writing and watching television.
In 1999, using a Zimbabwean diplomatic passport, he flew to Johannesburg for medical treatment and gave a rare interview to a South African newspaper in which he claimed that his socialist revolution had been necessary to remove Selassie’s “backward, archaic and feudalist system” and that millions of peasants had benefitted. More recently he has vanished from sight.
Mengistu’s armed guards were nowhere to be seen in Garvin Close today and The Times was able to drive past the barrier and right up the cul-de-sac before the soldiers suddenly appeared from behind a wall and ordered the intruder to leave. The half-dozen villas all looked abandoned.
As Mr Mugabe’s popularity has plunged in recent years, Mengistu was rumoured to have made contingency plans to move to North Korea. Now might be the time to dust them off — if he has not done so already.
23 thoughts on “MDC plans to extradite Mengistu HaileMariam to Ethiopia”
Good NEWS
Mengistu should face justice in his own birth place.
Yes, Mengistu had committed grave crimes against humanity. But I still give him a great deal of credit for his grandiose vision and genuine aspiration for Ethiopia. No one can question his allegiance to the nation. Meles, on the other hand, has been committing more dreadful crimes against humanity and yet his motive is not promoting national interest of Ethiopia but disintegrating and destroying it. As such, Meles well deserves the guillotine not Mengistu. Let Mengistu wait for his natural end up.
Death for Woyanie!!! Death for Agazi!!! Death for the Prime Monster Meles!!!!!!!!!!! Long live Ethiopia!!!
He is a Hero!! working all his life for the uity of Ethiopia and its people.
History and God will never forget this truth!
I strongly support of handling Mengistu to the Ethiopian court system IF THERE is ANY IN PLACE; however, Legesse Z., Seyoum Mesfin, Azeb Mesfin, Mebrahtu G/hiwot, and the rest of weyane mafia family committed much worse than that of Mengistu and they must face justice first.
I dont think that is a reliable news. It is written by woyanes to distruct attention of ethiopian people from thinking about the arest of Birtukan Mediksa. They will do what ever possible that they think will distruct peoples attention. We will hear a lot of fabrications until the 2010 election. Woyane`s power over the people at this time is not only weapon but they are pre aware of the psychological responses to every action they take. Before we get something done we go to the other thing. We need to make sure that Birtukan is released before doing something else.
both mengistu and meles are equally criminals. they must be tried for turning the country into their fief. catch meles frist and ship both of them to the Hague. neither menegistu is hero as much meles is a thief.
As a close relative of innocent victims of Mengistu’s red terror carnage, I am glad to hear that justice is about to be served. At this point I don’t really care who will hand him the ultimate justice he deserves. My butchered relatives were not even given a dignified burial. I heard two of them were tortured beyond recognition, summarily shot and thrown to the hyenas. They were just little boys when I left home in the 60’s and they were in their teenage years when they were murdered. The only crime they committed was because their late father owned a modern farm in one of those river valleys. They were accused of economic sabotage because the area government official could not start the tractors sitting idle for almost a year on the overgrown yard. I still have their pictures and my heart bleeds whenever I thumb through my photo album. And that is one of the reasons I do not want to go back home to visit. And it has been more than 42 years now. I will live with my ‘irm’ until I die.
Now a days we need aleader like mengistu who can punish these TPLF tuggs and their hodam folowers.
Leave mengistu alone!! Yes, he was a ruthless dictator and so many had perished when he was in power. But nobody will ever doubt his love for Ethiopia. For mengistu, all ethiopians are of the same race and color. He never discriminated against his brethern according to race. It was mengistu who brought equality between religions and ethnic groups. Muslims were second class citizens before mengistu. All those forgotten minorities (in the south) gained prominence during mengistu. We all belonged to one big Ethiopian family during his regime. Look at what is happening in the country now. Leave mengistu alone!! We have a bigger problem on our hands that is threatening the very existence of Ethiopia. Fascist Zenawi has no moral authority what so ever tp imprison mengistu. None!!
It is not far-fetched to think of the time when both Menghistu and Melles face the same tribunal under a democratically constituted Ethiopian justice system. Time is running out of such dictators who have caused enormous death and destruction to both the brotherly Ethiopian and Eritrean people; and no amount of rationalization could make one less criminal than the other.
For that possibility to happen, at least the helicopters that are ready to fly off Melles’s palace have to be disabled when that fateful time comes….
Could that be next May?….In the mean time, we have all to do our part for that inevitable moment to arrive SOONER..
i don’t ever think melese will harm his brother. still melese high on the rank. atlist mengistu is a nationalist while melese is giving our land for the sake of his stay in power. Then given all this, isn’t Mengistu FREE.
Thank you
The joke of the century would be Meles and his TPLF trying to judge someone else for crimes against their subjects.Mengistu was a killer but he was better than Meles simply because he was more of a statesman and less of a tribalistic.All Ethiopians were equal for him and all of them were his victims.But,he was the first one who gave my small town in Ogaden its first electricity and clean water untill the TPLF came along and took the waterpumps to Tigray.We never missed him but for us, things have changed only for the worse.
Shame on you MDC! Make your backyard clear before you start thinking about Mengistu or Ethiopia. First deal with your own dictator Mugabe then you can show us or you can become models. How can this be your priority agenda while this glorious country of yours is not even capable to deal with Cholera? Feed its people? Deal with your own human right and democracy issue. If this news is true? Shame on You MDC!!! Shame on you Morgan Tsvangirai.
Ethiopian from Ethiopia!
I agree on principle about Mengistus responsiblities on the atrocities meted on the youth while he was in power. I am one of the survivors due to the grace of the Almighty. But he should not be tried by TPLF. on the other hand if Morgan is a true son of Africa he shold also think twice on the options before rushing to extradict the true son of Africa.
“He loves his country, yes he was a butcher”. What a logic.
This is wonderful news.
Emperor Haile Selaisse will now rest in peace once this anti Ethiopian called Mengistu Haile Mariam pays for his wrong doings.
One at a time, let Mengistu get what he desirve and after this the woyane will soon be the question on the table. That is where we can say justice prevail.
Anyone who supports Mengistu is just nuts. We may not like the present government, but Mengistu was much worse than that. I will personally go to Addis to see his death sentence carried out. More than a million people perished under his dictatorship because they dared to oppose his policies and some of you are calling this guy a hero! Well, I, for one, would like to see this “hero” die a hundred times.
He might not be able to live in Zimbabe but I do not think he will be extradited to Ethiopia. If he have to leave Zimbabe he will go somewhere else. I do not think it is that easy (in his case) to send him to Ethiopia.
Its realy hard to escaped out of the crime he did & must be punished ,the way he killed million innocents like flies, and hoping to see the judgement of this bloody sucker fascist Mengistu Hailemariam as,I were one of the person who lost my parents and relatives with out any trial& made me handycap.
Mengistu is a criminal with very nationalistic camouflages, he must face justice in the world criminal court not in Ethiopia. I love his speeches though, they show how politically immature he was.
Send him to the ICC in The Hague!
what if we were in place of mengistu at a time? the worst of the worst, like we are watching now in melese. forget the 71 year old man.