LAWRENCEVILLE – Detectives are searching for a fourth suspect, known on the streets as “Money Mark,” in the murder of Lilburn convenience store owner Tedla Lemma, an immigrant from Ethiopia.
Loran Zemedu Araya, suspect in the killing of Tedla Lemma
Another suspect in the killing, Loran Zemedu Araya, of Atlanta (also an Ethiopian native), recently told investigators of the unidentified man’s involvement while implicating another man — Marshae Brooks — in the crime, a detective testified in Brooks’ probable cause hearing Friday.
Brooks, of Riverdale, tied up the disabled man in his bedroom while two other men stole big-screen televisions and other valuables from Lemma’s upscale Kenion Forest Drive home, Gwinnett police Det. G. Lorenzo said Araya told a panel of investigators and attorneys last month.
Lemma was hog-tied, beaten and gagged so tightly he suffocated, police have said.
A Gwinnett Magistrate Court judge forwarded a single count of murder against Brooks to Superior Court for prosecution. He remains at the Gwinnett County Jail.
Lorenzo said phone company records indicate Brooks’ cell phone was used in the vicinity of Lemma’s home March 25 last year, the day he died.
Araya and Brooks join a third alleged accomplice – Quincy Jackson, of Riverdale – who, like Araya, has been in custody since July. Brooks and Jackson were roommates, the detective said.
Brooks first told investigators he’d never set foot in Gwinnett County, but later changed his story to say he was in the home but did not hurt or bind Lemma, said Lorenzo. He claimed he was in the neighborhood visiting model homes for “decorating tips.”
After switching his story, “(Brooks) said at one point he even tried to untie (the victim),” the detective said. Brooks told police didn’t call 911 because he feared he would be blamed.
Police say Araya, a former Lilburn resident, knew most of the victims. Her parents once sold a package store to Lemma’s family.
At the time of his death, Lemma, 51, a well-heeled convenience store owner from Ethiopia, was paralyzed from a robbery when he was shot in the head several years ago.
Brooks had long been a suspect in the murder, but detectives lacked evidence to arrest him, Lorenzo said.
Araya told investigators she pulled a vehicle into Lemma’s garage and waited while the three men ransacked the home. She said Brooks later admitted to her he bound and gagged Lemma, the detective said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: IMF and the World Bank are financiers of genocidal regimes such as the one in Ethiopia. Their blood money is fueling many of the civil wars in Africa. They claim that Ethiopia’s economy is the fastest growing in Africa while 15 million Ethiopians are facing starvation and less than 2 percent of the population has access to electricity.
By Yonas Abiye | Daily Monitor
Addis Ababa — Ethiopia’s economic growth could slow to 6 percent in 2009 as the world slowdown is likely to hit its coffee export, tourism, and transportation the country’s leading foreign exchange earners, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday.
This is seen to largely contradict with the 12.8 percent economic growth maintained by the government.
Last month, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he saw only a 0.6 percent slide from the 12.8 percent economic growth last year owing to the world economic downturn, and said that was not to be considered significant compared to the economic achievements the country is registering, “in the face of the global financial crisis” “It is projected that the global crisis will continue to prevail for the next two or three years, on our side there is a hope that our economy will continue to grow at the same pace,” Meles told a press conference at his office.
But what did the IMF say on Wednesday?
The IMF said the country is one of the vulnerable countries to the unfolding crisis and it is expected to register only about 6% economic growth.
It said Ethiopia is in fact among the poorest the global financial crisis will weigh heavily on and it called for the international community to act “urgently” and “generously” to avoid devastating effects.
Speaking during a round table with the media and stake holders IMF Country Representative Sukhwinder Singh admitted the country was one of the fastest growing non-oil producing countries in Africa.
All the same, the country was no exception and will certainly be affected by the global downturn which is playing its ugly faces in all countries of the world-rich and poor, he said.
He said the impact on Ethiopia will be as bad as a six percent slash from what it managed to register last year.
The decline in export demand of coffee and its decreased price by 19%, the depreciation of effective foreign exchange rates by 30% last year, less tourism and revenue from airway transport are cited as the major factors behind the country’s poor economic performance this year.
85% of exports are going to industrial and emerging market countries who are already suffering major import declines.
He, however, indicated that the country could grasp positive advantage with the lower oil and fertilizer price at the global market.
He noted that in the middle of the year, USD 220 million Ethiopia incurred for importing oil has now gone down to USD 75 million.
He highlighted that, due to the shock induced by global crisis, economic growth projection in pre-crisis and at present is greatly varies.
The IMF forecasted the growth in SSA to be 5% a little bit earlier but it now expects only 3%, Sukhwinder said.
Current account balance in Ethiopia as elsewhere in SSA is worsening and it is currently -5.4% (while it is -2.6% in SSA) with low reserve level but risks are mounting, he said.
“We need 25 billion dollar concessional financing for Ethiopia and SSA as a whole who are most affected countries” he said.
He further indicated that Ethiopia has the highest inflation rate in Africa outside Zimbabwe (26%) and much weaker in fiscal reservation. The average in SSA is 2%.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Srauss-Kahn on Tuesday heralded that after first striking the advanced economies and then emerging markets, a third wave of the global financial crisis has begun to hit the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries, threatening to undermine recent economic gains and to create a humanitarian crisis He also called on the international community to act urgently and generously to avoid the potentially devastating effects of the global financial crisis on the most vulnerable countries. Similarly, the report by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that the world’s poorest countries including Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Rwanda and Bangladesh are unable to insulate their citizens from the crisis, with an estimated 43 out of 48 low-income countries incapable of providing a pro-poor government stimulus According to UNESCO, reduced growth in 2009 will affect the 390 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty and a loss of income around USD 18 billion (USD 46 per person).
ILO last month on its part announced that Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the three East African countries that have reaped from the Western economic growth, are suffering from the reduction of prices in the West as supermarket chains take unilateral commodity price cuts.
Saudi Arabia has announced the arrival of the first food crop harvested in Saudi-owned farms abroad, in a sign that the kingdom is moving faster than expected to outsource agricultural production.
Rice, harvested in famine-hit Ethiopia by a group of Saudi investors, was presented to King Abdullah recently and comes as other countries are still in the early stages of investing in overseas farms.
Maso Aliyi mourns his dead child, Shibre Aliyi, at his home in the village of Kararo in Ethiopia. Shibre had spent almost a month at a therapeutic feeding center. A lack of rain in the main February to April wet season has left at least 75,000 Ethiopian children under age 5 at risk from malnutrition, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also asserts that some eight million people need urgent food relief and another 4.6 million need emergency assistance (Oct. 2008)
The Ethiopian origin is likely to raise concerns about the trend to outsource food production to poor African countries, some of which suffer from chronic hunger.
In the past year the United Nations World Food Programme has helped to feed 11m people in Ethiopia, which has suffered crop failures and food distribution problems.
Some analysts argue that foreign investment in agriculture, even if earmarked for export, could ultimately help poor countries, providing them with employment, infrastructure, access to agricultural technology and export tax revenues.
However, western agriculture officials familiar with the Saudi plans say they are sceptical that the kingdom’s investment in food production overseas will help poor countries such as Ethiopia.
Riyadh has also provided the most detailed account to date of food-security plans known as the “King Abdullah initiative for Saudi agricultural investment abroad”.
Since the oil-rich kingdom announced last summer that it planned to grow “strategic food commodities” overseas and phase out the water-intensive production of domestic cereals, few details had emerged.
But in a note posted on its foreign affairs website, Riyadh has disclosed that it will “provide credit facilities to Saudi investors in agriculture abroad”, with the focus on “countries with promising agricultural resources and having encouraging government”. It did not say how much money it would make available in credits.
Hail Agricultural Development, a Saudi company, said last month that it would invest in agricultural production in Sudan, with the government providing 60 per cent of the funding.
The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank said this week that it was looking at investments to support agriculture, including the production of rice to be exported back to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi officials have so far visited Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, Sudan, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brazil, South Africa and Ethiopia, while delegations from other countries, including Australia, have visited Riyadh to discuss possible investments.
The investments “should be long-term through ownership or long-term contracts”, and Riyadh expects the “liberty of selecting the crops”.
The pursuit of foreign farm investments is the clearest sign of how last year’s price spikes in commodities such as rice, wheat and corn, and the global food crisis that ensued, are reshaping the politics of agriculture.
The move is not only a response to high prices, but also to the export restrictions imposed by leading providers of commodities – including India, Russia, Argentina and Vietnam. These exporters banned overseas sales to keep their local markets well-supplied and some of the restrictions remain in force.
After unblocking access for the past week to web sites that are deemed critical, Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia has made them inaccessible again starting yesterday.
Ethiopian Review associates in Addis Ababa confirmed today that all of the previously blocked web sites once again cannot be opened using the Internet service provided by the state-run Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC).
The U.S.-financed regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front ({www:Woyanne}) has made it illegal for private companies to provide Internet services in Ethiopia.
The government-owned telecom monopoly, ETC, is run by a former Woyanne intelligence officer named DebreTsion GebreMichael whose primary responsibility is to restrict access to information technology to as many people as possible. As a result, currently, there are only 30,000 Internet subscribers in Ethiopia out of 80 million people. Ethiopia has the least developed Information Technology infrastructure in the world, which is done intentionally by the vampire Woaynne regime.
SANA’A (SABA) – Yemeni police arrested 112 immigrants, among of them 15 women, who arrived to Khanfer coastline in Abyan province and Dhubab coastline in Taiz province.
122 Ethiopian emigrants, 76 Somali arrive in Yemen
The security bodies said that 79 Ethiopian emigrants arrived on an unknown ship carrying 150 persons to Khanfer coastline and escaped.
In the meantime the other 33 Ethiopian emigrants arrived to Dhubab coastline and sent them to take the investigation procedures for entering Yemen illegally.
The security bodies reported that 76 Somali refugees among of them 11 women and 5 children, one child passed away, arrived to Hadramout coastline and Dhubab coastline in Taiz province in three separated trips. It gathered them to main camp at Kharaz in Lahj province.
According to the Information Security Center, the number of Somali refugees
came to Yemen on February were 2559 refugees.
The number of African refugees, mostly Somalis, exceeding 800.000 refugees. They put more burden on the country’s fragile economy.
They usually arrive through the sea and sometimes die either as overcrowded boats capsize or as the refugees are enforced by smugglers to swim until they reach far Yemeni coasts.
The Al-Bashir indictment and its implication on Ethiopia and other countries
By Kadiro A. Elemo
The issuance of an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes committed in the conflict trodden Darfur is the political fever of this week. Right after the declaration of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the most senior ICC prosecutor, the intention of the ICC to indict the Sudanese President on the war crimes committed in Darfur, a lot has been undergoing behind the curtain to avert the issuance of the arrest warrant primarily because there was a trepidation that this will further deteriorate the fragile peace process in the Sudan and looms a humanitarian crisis or even ignite a new conflict in the war torn nation. Secondly, it is feared that Sudan might not corporate on the adjudication or extradition of those individuals involved in the commissions of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Thirdly, some dictators who realized their grip on power by perpetration and perpetuation of similar crimes on their people fear that indicting an incumbent head of the state will set a bad precedent in the international law. Fourthly, some also doubt that it might be used by colonialists and neo-colonialists to execute their hidden agenda. We also saw U.S. A. quagmire since U.S.A. want to use the court in this very case against Sudan but they want to remain immune to the jurisdiction of the Court as they are not party to the Court.
An Old Era in the International Law
According to the positivist understanding of international law, the dominant doctrine of the international law, since international law is established on the common consent of individual states, as opposed to the consent of individual human beings, states are the “subjects” of the international law and private individuals are simply the “objects” of the international law. The legal implication of this position is states are the only bearers of rights and duties and unlike in the municipal laws; individual human beings do not have rights and obligations under international law. In the municipal laws, individuals enjoy the civil capacity to sue and being sued; and in case of breach of criminal law, they are susceptible to prosecution. As per the dictum of the positivist’s doctrine of international law, suing and being sued under the international plane is the prerogative and responsibility of the states. Oppenheim, renowned authority in international law, explains this position as follows:
Since the law of nations is based on the consent of the individual states, and not of the individuals human beings, states solely and exclusively are the subjects of the international law. This means that the law of nations is for the individual conducts of the states, and not of their citizens …and individual human beings… is never directly a subject of international law.”
Individual Criminal Responsibility under Contemporary International Law
The emerging trends in the international law show that individual is responsible for his/her activities under international law for crimes such as crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and piracy that give universal jurisdiction to any state on the globe to prosecute the person whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of his/her nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country. The above-enumerated crimes are considered as a crime against all, which any state is authorized to punish or extradite since perpetrator is considered as an implacable enemy of all humankind: hostes humani generis. The idea of universal jurisdiction emanates from the cardinal principle of international law, which makes certain norms in international law erga omnes (owed to the entire world community).
The precedents for prosecuting individuals those crimes were set in Nuremburg and Tokyo Tribunals. The UN has established ad hoc international tribunal to try the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia (International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia) and Rwanda (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda). The UN has also established Hybrid Criminal Courts in different countries such as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and East Timor and rendered workable criminal justice system, as the trials were held in scene of the crime and in a fashion easy to obtain witness and evidences. However, the warrant issued for the Sudanese president, Oman Hassan Al Bashir, is the first of its kind issued for sitting head of state. Human Rights Watch says, “ICC issuance of an arrest warrant … signals that even those at the top may be held to account for mass murder, rape and torture.”
Double Standard: Who is next: Why Not Meles?
Various voices are accusing ICC for double standard. Jean Ping, the AU’s Commission chairman, said, “What we see is that international justice seems to be applying its fight against impunity only to Africa as if nothing were happening elsewhere, [such as] in Iraq, Gaza, Colombia or in the Caucasus.” This is a good start; however, ICC needs to be fair and give attention for crimes against humanity committed in different parties of the world. For instance, ICC needs to focus on Ethiopia where Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, created “a mini-Darfur “situation. An excerpt from my previous article:
The only difference between the Ethiopian Darfur and Sudanese Darfur is the fact that while Sudan is abhorred by the Western countries for its atrocious actions, Ethiopia is the key ally in security issues with the Western countries that offered human rights a sacrificial lamb. Besides this, Ethiopia receives substantial military and economic aids from Westerns that indirectly finance its egregious activities; and this not only reflects the recklessness of Westerns towards the atrocities but also shows their complicity otherwise they would have altered the political landscape and human rights situations in Ethiopia because of the tremendous leverages they have over considerably foreign aids dependent Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia is the second country after Sudan to reject the arrest warrant because they knew that Meles is on the same boat with Bashir on unleashing the same horrendous crimes on his peoples. If there is objectivity and fairness in ICC, Meles would be the next target. At any rate, attention for the war crimes committed on the voiceless peoples exonerates ICC from criticisms and increases its credibility.
What is the Significance of the Warrant?
Time will give answer to the question, “Will ICC succeed in getting Al Bashir”. However, the issuance of arrest warrant for him serves as a siren call for the sitting heads of states who commit those heinous crimes on their peoples since even there is “No Free Pass” for Presidents. Whether it is committed by Bashir or Bush, no crime goes unpunished. This is a lesson for Meles Zenawi.
(Kadiro Elemo is a human rights activist who uses his pen and tongue to fight against tyranny. He is a host and a producer of Voice of Oromia (www.voiceoforomia.com) that serves the voiceless, defends the dignity and fights for justice. He can be reached for comment, suggestion, or criticism at [email protected].)
By Yonas Abiye | Daily Monitor
After unblocking access for the past week to web sites that are deemed critical, Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia has made them inaccessible again starting yesterday.
The issuance of an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes committed in the conflict trodden Darfur is the political fever of this week. Right after the declaration of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the most senior ICC prosecutor, the intention of the ICC to indict the Sudanese President on the war crimes committed in Darfur, a lot has been undergoing behind the curtain to avert the issuance of the arrest warrant primarily because there was a trepidation that this will further deteriorate the fragile peace process in the Sudan and looms a humanitarian crisis or even ignite a new conflict in the war torn nation. Secondly, it is feared that Sudan might not corporate on the adjudication or extradition of those individuals involved in the commissions of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Thirdly, some dictators who realized their grip on power by perpetration and perpetuation of similar crimes on their people fear that indicting an incumbent head of the state will set a bad precedent in the international law. Fourthly, some also doubt that it might be used by colonialists and neo-colonialists to execute their hidden agenda. We also saw U.S. A. quagmire since U.S.A. want to use the court in this very case against Sudan but they want to remain immune to the jurisdiction of the Court as they are not party to the Court.