Ethiopia court delivers first mass trial verdict
Reuters; July 13, 1999
ADDIS ABABA, July 13 (Reuters) -
An Ethiopian court has handed down its first verdict in the mass trial of more than 5,000 officials of the country's former Marxist regime charged with crimes against humanity.
Four and a half years after the trial began, former agriculture minister Geremew Deble was on Monday found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison by the High Court in Addis Ababa for ``his role in genocide,'' the state-run newspaper Addis Zemen said on Tuesday.
Geremew served in the government of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and was among around 5,200 officials charged with war crimes, genocide and human rights violations allegedly committed during the
``Red Terror'' campaign of 1977-78 in which tens of thousands of people were killed or tortured.
Mengistu himself, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991 just before rebels took Addis Ababa, is one of 3,000 officials being tried in absentia.
The remainder, including Geremew, have been in custody since the early 1990s and the slow pace of the trial has alarmed human rights groups.
The newspaper did not say what specific crimes Geremew had been found guilty of but said he was acquitted on a charge of ordering the execution of an employee of Addis Ababa City Mortuary.
``The testimony of four prosecution witnesses presented against Geremew was based on hearsay as none of them were present when the alleged execution took place,'' the paper quoted the court as saying in its summation.
He will serve just one more year in prison because he has already been in detention for seven years.