ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — An [kangaroo] Ethiopian court sentenced to death eight alleged members of a separatist rebel group for an attack last year which left six people dead, officials told AFP Thursday.
“The Somali State High Court sentenced eight culprits to death for killing and wounding innocent people,” the official Ethiopian News Agency reported.
Six people were killed and more than 40 others wounded on May 28 last year when grenades were hurled into a stadium where some 100,000 people were gathered for a national celebration.
Police responded to the attack by firing in the air. Several of the victims died in the ensuing chaos.
The court also found the accused guilty of attempting to assassinate Abdullahi Hassen, a senior official for Ethiopia’s mainly ethnic Somali Ogaden region.
“The eight individuals are members of the ONLF,” local security chief Abdi Ile told AFP, charging that they were “trained by the Eritrean government for five years.”
The Ogaden National Liberation Front, formed in 1984, is fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia’s vast oil-rich Ogaden region, whom they say have been marginalized by the Tigrean People Liberation Front’s regime.
The eight can yet appeal the decision.
The Ethiopian Woyanne army launched a crackdown in Ogaden after ONLF rebels attacked a Chinese oil venture in April 2007 that left 77 people dead.
A bomb went off on Tuesday near the foreign ministry in Addis Ababa, killing six people and wounding seven. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.