By a Staff Reporter

On Monday, May 26, 2008, the Federal Supreme Court sentenced to death former Derg officials, granting a prosecution appeal that argued a life sentence was inadequate punishment for their genocide conviction. One of the officials was imprisoned for life.

According to the final verdict passed by the Court, Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam and his 17 high-ranking officials were sentenced to death because the defendants were found guilty of committing crimes related to genocide and crimes against humanity as filed by the Special Prosecutor in different charges, multiple counts at different criminal benches.

Mengistu and his senior officers were found guilty after a 13-year trial that ruled that his government was directly responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people and the torture of at least 2,400. Mengistu, who has led a lavish but reclusive life in exile in Zimbabwe since his 1991 overthrow, was tried in absentia. The prosecutor appealed against a life sentence handed to Mengistu and his associates in January 2007.

It overturned on appeal last year's ruling by the High Court sentencing Mengistu and 18 of his most senior officials to life imprisonment. The judge said he had passed the death sentence as the defendants had tortured and executed thousands of innocent people, which amounted to genocide. Tens of thousands of people were killed during a period of Mengistu's 17-year rule known as the Red Terror.

"Crimes committed by Mengistu and his co-defendants by killing an emperor and burying him under a toilet are unheard of in the annals of human history," the Court ruling said.

Last year, taking into account the age of the accused, the High Court had rejected the prosecution's call for the death penalty and passed life imprisonment. Most of the defendants also got life in prison and four received a sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

"Considering the prosecution's appeal that a life sentence was not commensurate to the crimes committed by the Mengistu regime, the court decided to sentence him to death," the Court said in its ruling..

During the trial witnesses had told the Court that family members who went to collect the bodies of their loved ones were asked to pay for the bullets that killed them, and evidence included torture videos.

The defendants convicts who were sentenced to death are: Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Capitain Fikre Selassie Wogderes, Colonel Fisseha Desta, Major Berhanu Bayeh, Captain Legesse Asfaw, Major Addis Tedla, Lieutenant Colonel Endale Tessema, Captain Gessese Wolde-Kidan, Major-General Wubshet Dessie, Major Kassaye Aragaw, Colonel Debela Dinsa, Captain Begashaw Atalay, Second Lieutenant Sileshi Mengesha, Colonel Nadew Zekarias, Lieutenant Petros Gebre, Second Lieutenant Aragaw Yimer, Major Dejene Wondimagegnehu, Lieutenant Desalegn Belay. Lieutenant Aklilu Belayneh was sentenced by the Court to life imprisonment as had been ruled by the High Court.

Except for the 16 defendants, Colonel Mengistu (living in Zimbabwe), Major Addis and Colonel Berhanu (living in the Italian embassy compound in Addis Ababa where they sought refuge in 1991) were tried in abstentia. The Court ordered the police to track down the convicts tried in abstention and give their hands to prison administration. The death sentences will be carried out after the head of state approves it.

The trial on genocide charges began with procedural hearings in 1992 and began in earnest in 1994.

Mengistu is in exile in Zimbabwe since his overthrow in 1991. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe has refused to extradite him since he fled there when EPRDF led by current Prime Minister Meles Zenawi toppled his regime and took the capital Addis Ababa.

In a rare interview he gave to South African daily, The Star, in December 1999, former dictator Mengistu, who was wanted for genocide, has defended his 17-year regime had come to power by popular revolution.

He told the newspaper that the Red Terror was merely a "fight between two different social groups," one of which was trying to overthrow his government. "We had to organize people into urban defense units and rural defense committees and peasants' associations to defend the country," he said. "The so-called genocide was this war in defense of the revolution".

He said the revolution had been necessary to replace the "very backward, archaic and feudalist system" of Emperor Haile-Selassie, who was overthrown in 1974. "The so-called genocide was this war in defense of the revolution".

He denied having ordered the death of Haile-Selassie, saying: "He was 80 years old and a very weak man. We tried our best to save him but we could not keep him."

He said his socialist revolution had helped millions of poor peasants who had struggled under imperial rule.

The Ethiopian government requested his extradition from Zimbabwe, but Mugabe turned down several requests to extradite him.

But were Mugabe to cede power if he loses next month's run-off to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Mengistu could be extradited. Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in late 2006 said it would withdraw the protection afforded by Mugabe's government, which considers Mengistu a friend of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said this week he will win Zimbabwe's 27 June run-off presidential poll, as he returned to Harare after weeks abroad.

Polls on 29 March saw the country's veteran leader, Robert Mugabe, lose his parliamentary majority for the first time in two decades in power. The MDC leader says he gained the more than 50 percent of the presidential vote needed to win without a run-off, but official results - released after long delays, said he gained 47.9 percent, with Mugabe taking 43.2 percent.

Born in 1937 in Welayita, Southern Region, Mengistu joined the army and graduated from a military school in 1966. He seized power in 1974 after the overthrow of Emperor Haile-Selassie who died the following year after being either murdered by his captors or denied the medical treatment that could have kept him alive.

Mengistu became secretary-general in 1984 of a Workers Party of Ethiopia, modeled on the Soviet Communist Party. His Marxist policies, which he began, abandoning in 1990 with some economic reforms, left a country ravaged by economic decline, famine and regional conflicts that consumed half the state budget. In a 1984-85 famine, reports indicated that up to one million Ethiopians starved to death.

Many accused him that he replaced a feudal society with totalitarian rule from 1977, marked by "Red Terror" purges and war, with catastrophic hunger compounding Ethiopia's woes.

They also say under his regime, tens of thousands were butchered, tortured or detained. Thousands of civilians were caught in the crossfire of the war against northern rebels and 700,000 peasants were forcibly resettled to starve.