HOW CAN ANY LEADER PROTECT SOMEONE & GIVE THEM SHELTER WHEN THEY HAVE MURDERED MILLIONS OF CHILDREN WOMEN & MEN? Mengitsu has lived in Zimbabwe for 17 years as the guest of Robert Mugabe, but the creation of a unity government with Morgan Tsvangirai could spell the end of his protection by Harare. Nelson Chamisa, the MDCs chief spokesman, told The Times that his extradition to Ethiopia would be “high on the agenda” of the new administration. “Zimbabwe should not be a safe haven or resting place for serial human rights violators like Mr Mengistu,” he said. “We can’t shelter purveyors of injustice.” Last year an Ethiopian court sentenced the “Butcher of Addis” to death after convicting him of genocide in absentia but Mr Mugabe flatly refused to extradite him. Mengistu, 71, and Mr Mugabe are close allies. The former dictator has advised Mr Mugabe on security issues, in return for a lavish villa in a barricaded cul-de-sac, with round-the-clock protection. Mengistu seized power in Ehtiopia after a military coup in 1974 that ended Emperor Haile Selassie’s 44-year rule and ushered in one of the bloodiest regimes Africa has known. In 1976 he mounted the “Red Terror” campaign against opponents of his Derg regime by standing in the centre of Addis Ababa, shouting: “Death to the counter-revolutionaries. Over the next few years more than half a million people were thought to have been killed in what Human Rights Watch called “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder ever witnessed in Africa”. He transformed Ethiopia into a Marxist state, backed by the Soviet Union, earning the sobriquet the “Black Stalin”, but when the Soviet Union collapsed Mengistu lost his sponsors. In 1991 he fled to Zimbabwe as the Tigre People’s Liberation Front and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front surrounded Addis. At the time, Washington asked Mr Mugabe to accept him to end the bloodshed
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 13:52:21 +0000
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