NEW YORK – Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro will visit Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, this weekend to attend a development meeting and to hold talks with the Horn of Africa nation’s top officials.
She will chair a meeting of UN agencies working to support the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
That gathering which will focus on the theme “Delivering as one in support of Africa’s development at the regional and subregional levels.”
While in the Ethiopian city, Ms Migiro is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin.
Berlin, Germany – In a recent interview in the German press Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie, possibly the best long distance runner ever, reconfirmed his ambition to run in next summer’s World Championship Marathon in Berlin, and also described Usain Bolt as an athlete blessed with talent.
The Jamaica’s ‘Lightning Bolt’, the greatest sprinter ever seen, won three sprint gold medals at the Olympic Games with three World records (100m, 200m, 4x100m). In contrast the Ethiopian concentrated on improving his World record this season and opted to run the fast Berlin Marathon instead of the Olympic Marathon. In Beijing he was sixth in the 10,000m but then last month became the first runner to break 2:04 in the Marathon, by clocking 2:03:59 in Berlin.
Interviewed by German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin, Gebrselassie was asked if he had watched other events after his Olympic race in Beijing, especially Usain Bolt’s performances.
“No, I was there only for four days and then went back to Addis Ababa. But of course I did watch other events on television. People in Ethiopia are generally not interested in sprint events, but everyone including myself wanted to see Usain Bolt – especially after he had won the 100 metres. He was flying. Three gold medals and three world records, that is unbelievable,” said Gebrselassie.
Asked if he felt that Usain Bolt’s celebrations after his victories looked arrogant and what he says about doping suspicions Gebrselassie answered: “It is important that athletics is a clean sport. If someone is criticised just because he runs very fast then this is unfair. For me Usain Bolt is an athlete blessed with talent. Sprint mainly has to do with talent. Of course he did a show (after his victories), but I did not see anything bad. May be others don’t like it, but his joy came from his heart.”
Again and again Gebrselassie has stated that he did not regret his decision to miss the Olympic marathon, but he admitted that he made a tactical mistake in the 10,000m final in Beijing. “I should have attacked with two kilometres to go, it was a mistake not to have done that. Actually it was quite easy. I don’t know, why I did not try doing it.”
The three-time Berlin Marathon champion (the only one to have won this event three times in a row) Gebrselassie confirmed that he wants to run the World Championship marathon in Berlin next year.
“Berlin is my lucky city. Sometimes you have something like this in a career.” Gebrselassie had already run in Berlin in 1992 in an Ekiden, which Ethiopia won. In 1995 he established a 5000 m meeting record at the ISTAF meeting with 12:53.19. That record stood for 13 years.
Gebrselassie looks forward to comingback to Berlin in 2009. “Even if I would finish tenth next year people will still be shouting ‘Haile, Haile’,” said Gebrselassie, who confirmed that the Olympic marathon in London 2012 is his distant goal.
Sometime late Wednesday, a man flagged down a cab, ordered the driver, Tekola Bekele, an immigrant from Ethiopia, to a quiet street, shot him in the back of the head, pulled his body to the pavement and drove away, police said yesterday.
At first, Prince George’s officers had no suspect in the homicide, the county’s 102nd this year, just the body of the cabbie.
But yesterday morning, county police say, an alert patrol officer six miles away spotted a cab matching the description of the one missing from the crime scene. When the officer tried to stop the car in Suitland, the driver fled and a high-speed chase ensued.
With the help of a woman who awoke to the sounds of a man breaking into her home, police caught Christian E. Brooks of Landover in a wooded area nearby.
Brooks, 25, of the 7700 block of Merrick Lane, was wanted on first-degree assault and attempted-murder charges in a recent shooting in the District, police said. He is charged with first-degree murder in Wednesday’s slaying.
Yesterday, cabdrivers and the manager of District Cab Associates, where the taxi driver had worked since 1982, remembered him as a friendly, responsible man who drove his silver 1996 Crown Victoria around Northwest Washington almost every night.
Ariel Emata said Tekola Bekele was the victim, adding that he last saw him Tuesday morning at the company’s Benning Road office, when he stopped by to pay his weekly $48 insurance charge — early, as usual.
“He came in and said, ‘My man, my man,’ ” Emata said. “He called all of us ‘my man, my man’ because he doesn’t know all of our names,” Emata said, chuckling as he recalled his brief visits with Bekele, 53, of Silver Spring.
“Shorty,” as he was known to fellow drivers, had trawled Georgetown and Dupont Circle for fares for more than 25 years.
Emata said Bekele owned his cab and was never required to report where he was working. Prince George’s police say they don’t know where the driver picked up his last customer Wednesday night, but they think the customer was carrying a black and silver semiautomatic handgun when he slid into the back seat. They recovered it when they arrested Brooks and planned to test whether it was used to kill the taxi driver.
Law enforcement sources said that about 11:23 p.m. Wednesday, along the 700 block of Avanti Place, a quiet residential street in Landover not far from FedEx Field, Brooks shot the cabdriver in the head at close range and then left his body on the street. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Prince George’s Officer Patrick Marron spotted the cab six miles away in Suitland and gave chase. According to police, Brooks bailed out of the cab in the 3600 block of Maywood Lane and fled into a wooded area.
About 1 a.m., a 911 call came from a woman who awoke and found a glass panel of her front door shattered. Luckily, she said, the deadbolt held.
“I heard a noise and thought my cats were creating some kind of commotion,” said the woman, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisal. “Honestly, I must have been brain-dead. I didn’t even think about burglary.”
The woman said she thought one of her three cats had gotten outside.
“I was about to go outside, where the guy was,” she said. “It was terrifying. When my brain kicked in, I called 911. ”
It was unclear yesterday whether a public defender had been appointed for Brooks. Attempts to locate family members were unsuccessful.
District and Maryland court records show a number of arrests for Brooks from 2001 to this year on drug and firearm possession, assault and theft counts.
Douglas Wood, an attorney for Brooks when he was acquitted in Prince George’s in May on charges of possessing a handgun, PCP and marijuana, said the case against his client then was weak.
Brooks had been arrested when police responded to a call of someone selling drugs, Wood said. Police did not see the activity but frisked Brooks and found keys to a car in a parking lot nearby. In the glove compartment, which Woods said was searched without a warrant, police found the handgun.
“They took DNA tests from the gun but never bothered testing it,” Wood said.
The case of a Canadian citizen who has been held in an Ethiopian jail for almost two years — without trial or access to a lawyer — while other foreign prisoners are released is “hauntingly reminiscent” of Omar Khadr, says Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.
Bashir Makhtal, a former Toronto resident in his 40s, was fleeing from fighting in Somalia when he and dozens of other foreign nationals were arrested crossing into Kenya in late 2006. Mr. Makhtal was deported to Ethiopia, where he was born, though he has been a citizen since 1994.
Human rights advocates say Kenyan authorities illegally rendered approximately 90 foreign nationals from 18 countries to Ethiopia during two months in early 2007. Twenty-two have since disappeared. Ethiopia eventually admitted that it has the others in prison.
Most other foreign governments have successfully lobbied for the release of their citizens. Earlier this month, eight more prisoners were released, leaving Mr. Makhtal and a Kenyan man as the last remaining detainees.
“Bashir Makhtal and Omar Khadr share a very distressing similarity when it comes to the lack of willingness of the Canadian government to defend their rights,” Mr. Neve said. “Canada now stands as the only western country with a national still held at Guantanamo. All other western governments, like the U.K., Australia and France, who had nationals held at Guantanamo years ago, did the right thing — they spoke out about the injustice. They insisted their nationals be brought back home.”
Mr. Neve said aspects of the Makhtal case will be “sadly familiar” to Canadians who followed the story of Maher Arar, the Canadian computer engineer who was tortured in Syria after being rendered from the United States.
Ethiopia has accused Mr. Makhtal of terrorist activities, but has yet to present any evidence or bring formal charges.
A recent Human Rights Watch report on the Horn of Africa renditions quotes a detainee who saw Mr. Makhtal briefly in an Ethiopian prison in July 2007. He said the Canadian was being held in solitary confinement, looked very weak and “famished,” and had a deep cut on his leg.
Mr. Makhtal’s family believes he is in jail because he is the grandson of a founder of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which Canada says is a legal organization, but Ethiopia accuses of terrorist activities.
Said Maktal, who is Bashir’s cousin (but spells his surname differently) says their grandfather was deeply involved with the ONLF, but his cousin was too busy trading used clothing throughout the region to have any time for extremism.
“He’s a very hard-working person and he was supporting so many relatives back in the Ogaden,” said Mr. Maktal, 35, who lives in Hamilton. “I don’t believe that he had any involvement” with the ONLF.
In April 2007, Ethiopian authorities admitted they were holding Mr. Makhtal, but refused to allow Canadian diplomats to visit him until July 2008, after Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai went to Ethiopia to lobby for access. All subsequent requests for consular visits or access to the Ethiopian lawyer hired by Mr. Makhtal’s family have been refused.
“Bashir Makhtal has essentially been held in incommunicado for almost two years now,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch in New York. “It’s absolutely essential that the Canadian government start making some noise and demanding loud and clear that the Ethiopian government must either transfer his case to a fair trial system and let him be represented by a lawyer and have consular rights, or they should immediately release him and repatriate him to Canada.”
Said Maktal has met officials from Foreign Affairs and lobbied politicians, including Ottawa MP John Baird. So far, Mr. Maktal said, he has heard promises the case will become “high profile,” but hasn’t seen any evidence the government is taking it seriously.
“I want the prime minister of Canada to make a personal intervention before it’s too late,” said Mr. Maktal, who believes the Ethiopian government will not feel pressured to act unless it hears directly from the prime minister. “Bashir’s condition is going down. This is unacceptable. How can you not have authority to visit your own citizen?”
Said Obama: “Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth,” a reference to Superman.
McCain joked that Democrats had already begun attacking Joe the Plumber, the Ohio man whom he referred to in Wednesday night’s debate, and claimed “that this honest, hardworking small businessman could not possibly have enough income to face a tax increase under the Obama plan.”
“What they don’t know is that Joe the Plumber recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses,” McCain said, drawing laughter with the reference to his property holdings.
The two men spoke at the 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity event organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York for the benefit of needy children. An estimated $4 million was raised.
The event often draws politicians as speakers and, by long tradition, presidential candidates appear as headliners every four years. In this case, the evening of humor came one night after an intense final debate of the presidential campaign.
McCain lampooned Obama’s primary opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as himself.
“Even in this room full of proud Manhattan Democrats, I can’t shake the feeling that some people here are pulling for me,” he said, before adding: “I’m delighted to see you here tonight, Hillary.”
The Jamaica’s ‘Lightning Bolt’, the greatest sprinter ever seen, won three sprint gold medals at the Olympic Games with three World records (100m, 200m, 4x100m). In contrast the Ethiopian concentrated on improving his World record this season and opted to run the fast Berlin Marathon instead of the Olympic Marathon. In Beijing he was sixth in the 10,000m but then last month became the first runner to break 2:04 in the Marathon, by clocking 2:03:59 in Berlin.