Former chairman of Kinijit North America chairman Shaleka Yosef Yazew has abruptly dropped his defamation lawsuit against Kinijit NA auditor and other individuals following a conference with the defendant’s lawyer.
Kinijit North America is a U.S.-based support group of Ethiopia’s major opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit) during the 2005 elections in Ethiopia.
Last week, Shaleka Yosef Yazew and his wife went to Ato Tesfai Asamaw attorney’s office accompanied by their attorney to take a deposition under oath. When it was time to do so, he surprised everyone including his attorney refusing to proceed. Instead, he chose to drop the case and walked away pretending to be sick.
The Shaleka knows that the auditor is a Certified Public Accountant who has done his homework in preparing all the necessary evidences to not only defeat him in court and make him pay for his legal expenses, but also further expose him to the public. It seems that the shaleka’s intention was to settle the case in a face saving way for himself, not to punish the auditor for his alleged defamation.
Ato Tesfai told Ethiopian Review that had the shaleka “continued with the proceeding, it could have put himself in a series legal trouble.”
Shaleka Yoseph had included Ethiopian Review as as accomplice in his initial complaint. He and his blind defenders had repeatedly threatened Ethiopian Review publisher with a lawsuit.
As part of his retreat, the shaleka was asked by Ato Tesfai to go public and ask for forgiveness of his community via any available media.
Ethiopian Review had previously reported that Shaleka Yosef and his cronies had pocked several hundred thousand dollars that belonged to the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit). Under his watch, over 2 million dollars that have been collected from Kinijit supporters in the United Sates have been squandered.
When Kinijit chairman Hailu Shawel was released from jail in Ethiopia, he had received a complete report about the corruption of Shaleqa Yoseph. Instead of taking appropriate measures to recover the stolen funds, Ato Hailu chose to try to cover up the massive corruption, which soiled his own name as well. Shaleqa Yoseph’s corruption, and Ato Hailu Shawel’s attempt to cover it up, was the main reason for the split up of the Kinijit top leadership and later the party itself. These two corrupt politicians and their cohorts should never be allowed to hold any public office.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, Azeb Mesfin, and the whole Woyanne mafia will no doubt face similar justice, sooner or later.
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday for death squad killings and kidnappings during his 1990s struggle against Shining Path insurgents.
Outside court, pro- and anti-Fujimori activists fought with fists, sticks and rocks. About 50 people chanted “Fujimori killer!” while several hundred chanted “Fujimori innocent!” before riot police separated them.
The court convicted the 70-year-old former leader, who was widely credited for rescuing Peru from the brink of economic and political collapse, of “crimes against humanity” including two operations by the military hit squad that claimed 25 lives. None of the victims, the three-judge court found, were connected to any insurgency.
Presiding judge Cesar San Martin said there was no question Fujimori authorized the creation of the Colina unit, which the court said killed at least 50 people as the government battled Shining Path terror with a “parallel terror apparatus” of its own. He sentenced Fujimori to 25 years in prison, only five fewer than the maximum.
Victims’ family members nodded with satisfaction and shed tears in the courtroom as the verdict was read.
“For the first time, the memory of our relatives is dignified in a ruling that says none of the victims was linked to any terrorist group,” said Gisela Ortiz, whose brother was killed.
Fujimori, who proclaimed his innocence in a roar when the 15-month televised trial began, barely looked up, uttering only four words _ “I move to nullify” _ before turning, waving to his children, and walking out of the courtroom at the Lima police base where he has been held and tried since his 2007 extradition from Chile.
His supporters in the courtroom shook their heads in disgust and groaned in exasperation. Fujimori’s congresswoman daughter, Keiko, called the conviction foreordained and “full of hate and vengeance.” She said it would only strengthen her candidacy for the 2011 presidential race.
“Fujimorism will continue to advance. Today we’re first in the polls and will continue to be so,” she said outside the courtroom. She has vowed to pardon her father if elected.
But some political analysts think Keiko Fujimori, 33, is more likely weakened by the verdict and would become a one-issue candidate. Her party has, after all, just 13 seats in Peru’s 120-member congress.
“It’s one thing to capitalize on the romantic image of the daughter defending a presumably innocent father, another defending a sentenced criminal,” said Nelson Manrique, a Catholic University professor.
Human rights activists heralded the case as the first in which a democratically elected former president was extradited and tried in his home country for rights violations.
Although none of the trial’s 80 witnesses directly accused Fujimori of ordering killings, kidnappings or disappearances, the court said the former mathematics professor and son of Japanese immigrants bore responsibility by allowing the Colina group to be formed.
It said Fujimori’s disgraced intelligence chief and close confidant, Vladimiro Montesinos, was in direct control of the unit.
And it noted that Fujimori freed jailed Colina members with a blanket 1995 amnesty for soldiers while state security agencies engaged in a “very complete and extensive” cover-up of the group’s deeds.
The Colina group was formed in 1991. In its first raid, using silencer-equipped machine guns, the group killed 15 people at a barbecue, including an 8-year-old boy. The intended victims, it turned out, lived on a different floor. The following year, the group “disappeared” nine students and a leftist professor at La Cantuta University.
In both cases, the killers targeted alleged sympathizers of the Shining Path, which was killing Peruvians with nearly daily car bombings. The group was devastated by the September 1992 arrest of its charismatic leader, Abimael Guzman, but some 500 Shining Path remnants remain active in Peru’s jungle, financed by the cocaine trade. Fujimori also was convicted of two 1992 kidnappings: the 10-day abduction of opposition businessman Samuel Dyer and the one-day kidnapping of Gustavo Gorriti, a journalist who had criticized the president’s shuttering of the opposition-led Congress and courts.
In the trial, prosecutors presented declassified cables showing that U.S. diplomats including then-Ambassador Anthony Quainton repeatedly questioned Fujimori and his aides about reports of extrajudicial killings by his military.
“He never wanted to talk about it very much. He always, of course, said that human rights abuses were not tolerated by his government,” Quainton, now an American University professor, told The Associated Press by phone from Washington.
Fujimori has already been sentenced to six years in prison for abuse of power and faces two corruption trials, the first set to begin in May, on charges including bribing lawmakers and paying off a TV station.
His 10-year presidency ended in disgrace in 2000, when videotapes showed Montesinos, now serving a 20-year term for corruption and gunrunning, bribing lawmakers and businessmen. Fujimori fled to Japan, then attempted a return five years later via Chile.
“We understand Mr. Fujimori will appeal the ruling,” said a Japanese foreign ministry official who declined to be named in line with department policy.
“The Japanese government will watch legal procedures for Mr. Fujimori,” the official said.
Fujimori remains remarkably popular and his successors have maintained his market-friendly policies. Peru had Latin America’s strongest economic growth from 2002-2008, averaging 6.7 percent. A November poll found two-thirds of Peruvians approve of Fujimori’s rule.
In his final appeal Friday, Fujimori cast himself as a victim of political persecution, saying the charges against him reflect a double standard. Why, he asked, isn’t current President Alan Garcia also being prosecuted, since it was from Garcia, who also preceded him in office, that Fujimori inherited the messy conflict that would claim 70,000 lives.
Garcia denies responsibility for human rights abuses during his 1985-90 administration — and has the power to pardon Fujimori.
Human rights advocates called the verdict historic.
“What this verdict says is that these crimes did in fact happen and that Fujimori was in fact responsible for them, and that’s something Peruvians needed to hear,” said Maria McFarland, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch, who was in the courtroom.
“For so many years, certain sectors in Peru have said that you have to look the other way and refused to acknowledge what happened.”
(Associated Press writers Carla Salazar and Andrew Whalen contributed to this report.)
PRESS RELEASE
OGADEN NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT
Claims by the Ethiopian regime’s Communication Minister, Bereket Simon, that the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) is “now in a state of crisis and very weak” can only be described as wishful thinking which is far from reality and bordering on fantasy.
The fact of the matter is that the ONLF’s operational capacity is now higher than at any point since the start of the organizations armed struggle. It is precisely because the Ethiopian Woyanne regime seeks to conceal from the international community the widespread support the people of Ogaden have for the ONLF and the exponential growth of the ONLF’s military strength that members of the international media are denied unfettered access to Ogaden.
The ONLF has defeated every major military campaign launched by the Woyanne regime in Ogaden over the last two years and is on the offensive in all operational theaters in the Ogaden. Defections of the regimes troops are on the rise and, in some areas, Woyanne troops are selling their weapons to ONLF military commanders.
The most recent claim by the regime’s communication minister is clearly designed to {www:instill} a false sense of confidence in oil exploration companies which the regime is trying to lure back to Ogaden.
The communication minister’s claim that “The situation in Ogaden now is improving by the day” is a gross misrepresentation of the true state of affairs in Ogaden and demonstrates the regimes continuing efforts to conceal the suffering it has inflicted on the people of Ogaden. It is also a response to growing international concern over the deliberate and systematic campaign of collective punishment, war crimes and {www:genocide} against the civilian population of Ogaden.
While the ONLF has left no stone unturned in a search for a just and peaceful settlement to the Ogaden conflict and still stands ready to enter into direct talks with Ethiopia’s Woyanne regime in the presence of a neutral third party mediator of international standing, the regime continues to choose a futile military solution in a bid to suppress the legitimate desire of the people of Ogaden to self-determination, development and democracy.
The fact of the matter is that there is no “round table” in Ethiopia, as the Minister claims, to discuss peace. The Woyanne regime is, by all measures, a dictatorship with no respect for human or civil rights. It is a regime engaged in a deliberate and {www:systematic} campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Somalis in the Ogaden.
The ONLF will continue to engage this regime wherever and whenever it enters Ogaden. We will also further strengthen our cooperation and coordination with other oppressed nations and members of the political opposition who respect our peoples legitimate rights to self-determination.
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)
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See AFP Report Below
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Ethiopia says Ogaden rebellion on last legs
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AFP) — A rebellion by ethnic Somali’s in Ethiopia’s southeastern Ogaden region has been significantly weakened, the government claimed Tuesday, ruling out any negotiations.
Communication Minister Bereket Simon said Addis Ababa’s military {www:riposte} and a dual approach of undermining the Ogaden National Liberation Front by boosting development initiatives and offering a rival political platform were paying off.
“Now that the development is on its way, the ONLF has lost too much ground. It is now in a state of crisis and very weak, very divided with many splinter groups,” he told a press conference.
“The situation in Ogaden now is improving by the day. That is the government assessment: that the ONLF will find itself in a difficult position,” Bereket said.
[Bereket also says his regime was victorious in Somalia and Ethiopia has a 12% economic growth.]
He said the rebels, whom Ethiopia Woyanne alleges are supported by arch-foe Eritrea, were also buckling under the pressure of the military offensive launched in the aftermath of a deadly attack against a Chinese-run oil venture in the Ogaden.
“The last two years’ experience demonstrates that the ONLF has not been successful in military operations. On the contrary, the counter-insurgency operations by the government have been effective,” Bereket said.
Bereket added that the government had no intention to negotiating with the rebels, who have been fighting since 1984 and claim their oil-rich territory is systematically marginalised by the Christian-dominated regime.
“We have given them a chance to come to the round table and they have refused so far and preferred the military option. So now the government is not in a position to invite them to the round table,” he said.
“Whenever there is a possibility to get ONLF fighters, we’ll get them, as we have done with success in the past.”
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ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The plan by Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) to hold a march in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa this coming Thursday to protest the arrest of their leader Wzr. Birtukan Mideksa has been banned by the Woyanne regime.
Vice-Chairman of UDJ, Dr Hailu Araya, told Awramba Times today that the authorities have denied them permission to march.
The UDJ leaders had taken extraordinary measures to make sure that the march would not be banned by the dictatorial regime. One of the measures they took is to limit the number of participants only to 250 registered members of the party who are in leadership positions. They also requested the Federal Police (the notorious Meles Zenawi’s death squads) to help them make sure that only those who have badges to participate in the march.
Woyanne was not impressed by UDJ’s tail wagging. Under the Meles regime any march by UDJ is going to be a march to Kality.
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