But Kebede, and hundreds of thousands of other Ethiopians, may soon get their day in court. This week 44 senior officials of the Dergue – the savage Marxist regime that ruled Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991 – will appear in an Addis Ababa courtroom to face charges of murder, torture and other crimes against humanity. If found guilty, they could be hanged. At least 1,300 other Dergue henchmen face similar trials. And Ethiopia’s transitional government is seeking the extradition of 22 other former key figures, including the country’s reviled former dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who escaped into comfortable exile in Zimbabwe in May 1991 and is being tried in absentia. The tribunal constitutes the most extensive judgment of human-rights abuses since Nuremberg – and marks the first time African leaders have been held accountable for atrocities committed under their rule. Among those watching with interest: Rwanda’s new Tutsi-led government, which is readying trials for thousands of Hutu militiamen and officials implicated in the 1994 genocide.
The Dergue left behind a vast incriminating record. Investigators seized 300,000 pages of documents, detailing murders and execution orders. A forensics team dug up hundreds of bodies of civilians allegedly killed in a six-hour bombing raid by Ethiopian Air Force planes in June 1988. Also discovered: the remains of 60 officials of Emperor Haile Selassie’s government who were led from their cells to a small courtyard, machine-gunned to death and dumped into a pit. Says Amde Akalework, whose father, uncle and two cousins were executed that night in November 1974: ““I would like to see Mengistu caged in Revolution Square every day, just so I could ask him, “Why?’ ''
The question may never be answered. Mengistu isn’t about to step forward; former members of the Dergue, who will be defended by government-appointed lawyers, remain unrepentant. Says Abraham Tsegaye, an attorney with the Special Prosecutor’s Office, ““These trials will put the past on record.’’ Whether that constitutes ““justice’’ is up to the victims’ families to decide.
