EDITOR’S NOTE: It is good that U.S. authorities have arrested the torture suspect, but they are being hypocritical. In fact, the U.S. foreign policy on Ethiopia promotes gross human rights violations such as torture. Just this week, the U.S. Government sends a delegation to participate in the burial ceremony to a mass murderer in Ethiopia. By the U.S. Department of State’s own account, Meles Zenawi has been responsible for widespread torture and extrajudicial killings. (Read here one of the many reports).
(AP) — U.S. federal agents in Denver arrested an Ethiopian immigrant suspected of torturing political prisoners decades ago in his home country, prosecutors said Friday.
Three former Ethiopian political prisoners identified the man as Kefelegn Alemu Worku, saying he brutally mistreated them and others in late 1970s, authorities said.
He is being held on immigration charges, and federal agents said they were investigating a report that he was involved in atrocities that occurred in Ethiopia following a military coup that plunged the nation into turmoil, marked by arrests, tortures and executions.
All three former prisoners, now U.S. citizens living in Denver, picked the suspect out of a photo lineup, the U.S. attorney’s office said. They told investigators that the man they identified as Worku was a guard at a prison in Ethiopia where they were held.
He was arrested Aug. 24. His attorney didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment. The arrest was first reported by KUSA-TV.
The suspect has been charged with unlawfully procuring citizenship or naturalization and aggravated identity theft. If convicted of both charges, he faces up to 12 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000.
The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C., said no one was available to comment.
Two of the former prisoners who identified the man as Worku said he beat them and subjected them to gruesome torture. The third said he witnessed the suspect abusing other prisoners. The men are identified only by initials in court documents.
Prosecutors said the suspect used several names. They say he entered the U.S. using a stolen identity and falsified paperwork and illegally achieved U.S. citizenship in 2010.
Officials won’t decide whether to attempt to deport the man until the immigration and identity theft charges are resolved, said Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Denver.
It wasn’t immediately clear how or when the man left Ethiopia. Another Ethiopian immigrant in Denver told investigators the suspect lived in Kenya for several years before entering the U.S.
The suspect is about 68 years old and has been living in a Denver apartment under the name of Habteab Berhe Temanu, prosecutors said. They declined to say how he had been supporting himself.
Dorschner said no picture of the suspect will be released because investigators may still ask others to identify him from a photo lineup.
A court hearing has been scheduled for Tuesday.
The man was a regular at the Cozy Cafe in Denver, which serves Ethiopian food, said Girma Baye, the restaurant manager.
Baye said he knew nothing of the accusations against the man and that the arrest came as a shock to him and others.
‘‘If I knew anything about his past, he would not be long in the United States,’’ Baye said.
Baye described him as ‘‘a happy, social person’’ and a “nice guy.”
A large group of donkeys residing in Addis Ababa went to the National Palace to pay respect to the late Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi, according to ETV.
On a serious note, the donkeys are better than all the people pigs who cried for the genocidal dictator who has been looting Ethiopia and terrorizing its people for the past 21 years. They cry for a guy who calls them adhgi (agasses). We agree with Meles on that — they are agasses.
VOA exposes how people through out Ethiopia are being forced to cry for the late Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi. This program pulverizes the past 10 days of all out propaganda campaign that has been waged by the TPLF junta. The desperate junta is trying to take a political profit out of the late dictator’s sudden death.
Airline boycott has a storied past in South Africa as part of a broader consumer boycott by activists standing against state repression. These activists who called for a free and democratic South Africa understood that, if one is serious about human rights and democracy, then every
nonviolent resistance, including economic boycott, must be waged.
For 21 years, the violent and manipulative TPLF rulers have been coercing where they can — such as human rights defenders in Ethiopia and everyone else in the country. And where they can’t coerce, for example, outside of the country, they have been playing with the minds of pro-democracy Ethiopians abroad, leading us to dither and to limit ourselves in the nonviolent methods we use to wage our fight against dictatorship in our country. It is time that we take the example of the freedom-fighters in South Africa. We should take action and stop flying Ethiopian Airlines (EAL) to put pressure on the oppresses.
With every flight on EAL, we are dutifully handing over our scarce cash, in the form of foreign currency, and are unwittingly keeping the hungry TPLF well-fed and the military loyal to them.
Here are just a few significant moments in the boycott movement against the South African Apartheid rule’s airline, South African Airways (SAA). This can inspire us to do our part and quit using EAL:
As early as the 1960s, several African states pioneered the application of pressure on the brutal Apartheid regime through the regime’s airline, by prohibiting the use of their airspace by SAA. This made it exceedingly difficult for the regime to operate its airline. Under effective grassroots activism, SAA started to become a liability for respected firms left and right that had been associated with SAA. For example, in 1985, the well-established Washington D.C. law firm Covington & Burling, which used to represent SAA, dropped it as a client.
Patriotic anti-apartheid activists were able to also influence US policy to pass in 1986 the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. Among other things, the law banned flights by SAA into the United States. Soon thereafter, Australia followed suit with a similar legislation concerning SAA.
In 1988 anti-Apartheid activists in London unrelentingly occupied SAA’s offices there, as part of the ‘No Rights? No Flights!’ campaign. Activists realized that one of the ways to effectively strike at the heart of the violent and racist white rule in South Africa was to target a boycott where it hurt the repressive rulers: at their treasured cash-cow, the government controlled airline. The poster on the left in the picture above (and enlarged below) subverts the Apartheid regime’s advertisement slogan for the purpose of galvanizing consumers to stop flying SAA.
Economic boycotts such as these, along with a wide range of methods to resist the authoritarian racial rule in South Africa, led to the crumbling of Apartheid rule in 1990.
The latest release by Wikileaks has the following:
ATTRIBUTION: STRATFOR sources
SOURCE DESCRIPTION: Egyptian diplomatic source
SOURCE HANDLER: Reva
Follow-up to insight on Egypt asking Sudan to station commandos in Sudan for ‘worst case’ scenario on the Nile issue:
Sudanese president Umar al-Bashir has agreed to allow the Egyptians to build an a small airbase in Kusti to accommodate Egyptian commandoes who might be sent to Ethipoia to destroy water facilities on the Blue Nile… [Click here to the full text]
This coming Saturday, supporters of the Woyanne junta in Toronto, Winnipeg, Canada and Houston, Texas are organizing a cry-fest for the late Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi who died over a month ago. This is a good opportunity for patriotic Ethiopians in these cities to show how much the deceased dictator is hated.
Toronto is on Sunday, September 2. See details below:
(We thank the reader who sent us this information. If you hear about any such activity in your area, please let us know.)
The voice of the voiceless – of the young, the woman, farmers and the 80 million people he led – the leader of Ethiopians in Ethiopia Melese Zenawi has passed. He led, he inspired, he was cheered, he was feared, he was hated, but where he executed his development plan- the universities, the hospitals, the infrastructures, the strategy to join the middle income group countries by 2025; the people always said…”We did it! When the development activities he launched continue and completed; the people will say “We did it ourselves!
Canadians of Ethiopian origin residing in The Greater Toronto Area are going to hold a memorial ceremony on September 2, 2012 Sheraton hotel, 123 Queen Street West at 2:00PM.
