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Ethiopia - Victim 'scarred for life'
August 7, 2007 12:59 PM
Moonee Valley
By Charmaine Camilleri
A MAN accused of stabbing his wife outside Flemington police station last November changed his plea to guilty during his trial for attempted murder last week.
Two days into the trial at the Melbourne Supreme Court, 39-year-old Wondimu Belete of Footscray re-entered his plea.
The defendant allegedly broke an intervention order and stabbed his wife, then aged 35, 12 times in front of their two young children, about 50 metres from the police station in Finsbury Street.
The couple, who had separated five months earlier, had exchanged their children in an access arrangement at the police station before the incident.
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At the hearing last Friday, prosecutor John Champion told the court the victim had suffered severe physical and emotional injuries.
''Without prompt medical attention, she would have been dead.
''She had six wounds to the head, two to the chest, two to the leg and two to the right knee. [It was] severe and life-threatening.
''She will most likely suffer bodily scars for the rest of her life.''
Mr Champion said the accused had grabbed the weapon from his car and concealed it under a hat when he approached his wife with the intent ''to attack''.
''The attack contained elements of anger, loss of control ... domination of a man over his wife.
''Mr Belete said during police interview that during the attack he was in control.''
The victim, dressed in black, sat in the front row with an interpreter and appeared distressed at times during the hearing, with her head down and arms crossed.
She made no eye contact with her husband, who sat in the rear of the chambers flanked by an interpreter and two police officers.
Defence council Peter Chadwick told the court his client had obtained the knife ''opportunistically'' and the stabbing was not pre-planned.
He said the knife had been sharpened weeks earlier and used only for domestic purposes.
''He told police repeatedly that he took the knife over only to threaten her.
''He behaved in a fashion which inflicted enormous injury on his wife ... It was a substantial frenzied attack.''
Mr Chadwick said he was unable to determine the motive because the accused didn't recall the circumstances of the attack.
He said his client, who spoke little English, had suffered severe depression and had not spoken to relatives in Ethiopia or his children since the incident.
He had no criminal history, had been isolated in prison due to language barriers and denied ever abusing his wife, Mr Chadwick said.
Justice Harper said: ''To attack somebody else with the savagery that seems to be apparent in this case without intention to kill is inconceivable.''
A sentence is scheduled to be handed down on August 21.
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Ethiopia - Part three: Mixing work and pleasure to raise money and awareness
Welcome to Revealed, a TV and Web program that gets under the skin of the world's brilliant thinkers, creative champions and inspirational leaders. Revealed offers a glimpse of the private people behind their public profiles in the run up to important moments in their lives.
This month: Liya Kebede of Ethiopia.
Follow the hectic schedule of one of the world's most beautiful women as she juggles photoshoots, motherhood and charity events
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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Ethiopia carries out rare execution
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) -- Ethiopia carried out its second execution in a decade on Monday, against a military officer convicted of killing the country's former head of security and immigration, the federal prison service said.
Major Tsehai Wolde Selassie was convicted of shooting dead Kinfe Gebremedhin, a close ally of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, outside an officers' club in 2001.
"Major Tsehai was executed after his appeal for clemency to the Supreme Court was turned down and his death sentence was approved by President Girma Wolde Giorgise," the Federal Prison Administration said in a statement.
The last time Ethiopia carried out the death penalty was in 1998, when it executed an Eritrean businessman for the shooting of a popular Ethiopian general.
The FPA did not say how Tsehai was executed but soldiers are supposed to face a firing squad, according to Ethiopian law.
Last month, an Ethiopian court rejected a prosecution request for the death penalty for 35 opposition members accused of treason and inciting violence during protests against alleged fraud in a 2005 election
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Ethiopia executes spy boss killer
BBC News
A major in the Ethiopian army has been executed for murdering the head of the intelligence and security services six years ago, the authorities say.
Tsehaye Woldeselassie was found guilty of shooting dead Kinfe Gebremedhin in a case which shocked the country.
Death sentences are extremely rare in Ethiopia and this is only the second execution carried out since the present government came to power.
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It remains unclear whether the killing had a political or personal motive.
The authorities did not say how Tsehaye was killed but executions are carried out by firing squad under Ethiopian law, Reuters news agency reports.
Gebremedhin had been a fighter for the Tigre People's Liberation Front in its 1980s war against the military government.
After the TPLF's eventual victory he emerged as Ethiopia's chief of security and immigration and as a right hand man to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Then one day in May 2001 as he walked in to the armed forces officers' club in Addis Ababa, a fellow member of the TPLF, Maj Tsehaye Woldeselassie, shot him in the head at point blank range.
Thousands turned out for his funeral in the capital, Addis Ababa.
Tsehaye was quickly arrested and eventually convicted of the murder.
The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says that at the time, speculation was rife about the motive for the killing.
It was a time of tension within the TPLF with some members unhappy about the outcome of the war against Eritrea and bitter divisions inside the politburo of which Kinfe Gebremedhin was a member.
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10:54:07 am, by nazret.com, 1296 words, 1503 views 
Ethiopia - Deadly battle for quixotic prize
Vague promise of finding oil drives violence in Ethiopia, complicating a region already embroiled in civil war, as nation's real natural gas reserves attract global attention
By Paul Salopek
Chicago Tribune
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Petroleum nearly killed Eskedar Demissew. Or at least the illusion of it did.
In the predawn gloom of a morning in April, insurgents rousted the stocky truck driver from his tent at a remote oil prospecting camp in Ethiopia's Ogaden desert. They lined him up in the sand with other workers. And without further ceremony, they sprayed them with machine-gun fire.
Demissew survived, just barely, by playing dead. But 74 other people, including nine Chinese contractors, died in one of the worst attacks on an African oil facility in recent memory.
"I will never work in oil again," Demissew said quietly at his tiny house in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where he was popping painkillers and hoping to regain full use of his nerve-damaged arms. "It isn't worth it."
Unfortunately, when it comes to getting shot over disputed energy resources, that's especially true for the Ogaden, where little oil actually has been found.
Indeed, while lucrative pools of crude have inflamed conflicts in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, even the merest promise of oil wealth -- most of it tragically overblown -- is stoking violence in the arid wastes of eastern Ethiopia, one of the poorest corners of the world and home to a secessionist movement that has been bubbling for decades.
Rebels with the Ogaden National Liberation Front have added oil operations to their usual targets of army convoys and police stations in the Ogaden, warning all foreign companies not to steal "the mineral resources of our people" on pain of further guerrilla attacks. At the same time, Ethiopia's government has assured exploration firms that recent security crackdowns in the region have again made prospecting safe. And local conspiracy theorists now hold that the ugly civil war in the Ogaden is heating up only because the U.S. and China are vying over its hydrocarbon riches.
All of which is belied by a startling fact: Today there isn't a single functioning oil field in the Ogaden, a tract of scrubland the size of Nebraska near the Somalia border. Most of the wells drilled to date have been dry holes. Natural gas is another matter: Exploitable reserves abound. But even this relatively modest bonanza is many years away from profitable development, experts say, because of the area's profound isolation and instability.
"You've heard about resource wars, right?" said a geologist in Ethiopia familiar with that nation's energy potential. Asking not to be named because of the political sensitivity of the issue, he added, "Well, this one involves an unusual resource. It's called imaginary oil."
The main trouble in the Ogaden doesn't involve squabbling over supplies of black gold.
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Ogadeni insurgents have been battling for independence from Ethiopia since 1984, complaining of discrimination by the central government against the region's Somali-speaking nomads.
In recent months the rebels have accused the federal army of mass rapes, torching villages and withholding food aid in the famine-prone region. Ethiopia angrily denies the charges.
But in response to the spectacular rebel attack on the Chinese-run Abole exploration project on April 24, some of the war's bitterest rhetoric has involved the ownership of the Ogaden's underground wealth. And grossly exaggerated notions regarding the size of that bounty -- whether it be used to bankroll a future Ogaden state or alleviate poverty in a unified Ethiopia -- have only complicated a seemingly intractable civil war, analysts say.
"It is my opinion that oil will eventually contribute significantly to the country's economy," Alemayehu Tegenu, Ethiopia's minister of Mines and Energy, predicted in an interview. "We need three or four more years of exploration to fully understand our potential. After that, I see oil as a unifying force."
But many residents of Ethiopia's Ogaden beg to differ.
"The oil is under our land," insisted Kadija, a wizened trader from the dusty Ogaden capital of Jijiga who was too worried about government reprisals to share her full name. "These foreign companies should be giving money to our Somali elders. They should be building schools here."
In fact, there simply is no oil money to give out.
According to industry reports, some of the Ogaden's rock formations match those found across the Red Sea in oil-sodden Saudi Arabia. But years of drilling, some by American companies, have proved disappointing. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says that Ethiopia can muster a paltry 428,000 barrels of estimated crude reserves -- what neighboring Sudan exports every 24 hours.
The real prize in the poverty-stricken country seems to be natural gas, experts say. An estimated 4 trillion cubic feet worth of gas has drawn large companies such as Malaysia's Petronas and Sweden's Lundin to the volatile and nearly roadless Ogaden. Chinese subcontractors do much of the prospecting.
All the activity in the Ogaden is part of a new hunt for oil in Northeast Africa, industry analysts say.
Exploration projects are under way in such improbable oil sources as Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea and even war-racked Somalia. Contrary to local gossip, the volumes of potential reserves involved haven't attracted American or Chinese oil majors, which are wrestling for access to bigger subsurface treasures elsewhere in Africa, mainly Nigeria and Angola.
The snooping in Africa's Horn is spurred mostly by energy nationalism locking up supplies on other continents, experts say. Yet that hasn't stifled wild expectations that oil will yank some of the world's poorest nations out of misery.
"It seems like a buzz, but we're really just turning over stones at this stage," said an executive in Addis Ababa who refused to be identified because Ogaden rebels were making death threats against some oil companies. "With Russia and the Middle East closed off to us, we're working around the margins."
That Ethiopia's own ragged margin -- the Ogaden -- is growing more unstable due to oil interest is lost on no one.
"Rumors of resources drive conflict as much as the resources themselves," said John Mitchell, a petroleum expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London think-tank. "Especially when it comes to a commodity like oil."
Mitchell noted that the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina was stoked in part by murky reports of offshore oil -- reserves that remain untapped to this day. And theoretical crude deposits in the high Arctic are now causing friction between Russia and its circumpolar neighbors, he said.
On Thursday, a Russian submarine dropped a flag onto the seabed at the North Pole in a gesture meant to strengthen its claim over potential oil supplies hidden away there. With global warming melting the northern ice cap, the Arctic is drawing the energy-hungry gaze of several nations.
In Ethiopia, Demissew, the wounded truck driver, said he could not care less whether his abandoned oil prospect produced anything. With three bullet holes in his body, he considered himself lucky to be alive. Most of his tent-mates, he said, were dead.
"Nobody told us the company had been warned by the rebels," he said, cradling a useless arm in his lap.
Back in the Ogaden, meanwhile, industry sources said that Demissew's former employers were already replacing the oil camp vehicles and generators destroyed during the rebel attack.
Hope and death spring eternal in the Ogaden, it seems, even when oil doesn't.
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Famous fossil Lucy leaves Ethiopia for controversial U.S. tour
The Associated Press
Monday, August 6, 2007
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: The 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton was spirited out of Ethiopia with no fanfare for a tour of the United States — a trip that some say is simply too risky for one of the world's most famous fossils.
The fossil embarked on the voyage late Sunday or very early Monday, according to employees at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum in the nation's capital, Addis Ababa. Although the departure was expected this month, many were surprised at the way the skeleton's departure was handled.
"This is a national treasure," said Kine Arega, a 29-year-old attorney in Addis Ababa. "How come the public has no inkling about this? It's amazing that we didn't even get to say goodbye."
A full-scale model of "Lucy," the celebrated skeletal remains of a female hominid who lived 3.2 million years ago, is seen at a prehistoric museum in Bidon, France. Lucy will leave Ethiopia next year for her first-ever foreign exhibition, officials said.(AFP/File) Pictured Right
Paleontologist Berhane Assaw said he worked late Sunday at the museum only to arrive Monday morning to find that the fossil and key staff members had left for Texas.
The departure "should have been made public," he said.
Ethiopia's culture minister, Mahamouda Ahmed Gaas, declined to comment.
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington has objected to the six-year tour because museum experts don't believe the fragile remains should travel. Even in Ethiopia the public has only seen the real Lucy remains twice. The Lucy exhibition at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum is a replica and the real remains are usually locked in a vault.
Lucy goes on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Aug. 31, continuing through April 20, 2008. The other tour stops have not been finalized, according Melodie Francis, a spokeswoman at the Houston museum. But in announcing the plans to display the artifact last October, Ethiopian officials listed Washington, New York, Denver and Chicago as tour stops.
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The fossilized remains were discovered in 1974 in the remote, desert-like Afar region in northeastern Ethiopia. Lucy is classified as an Australopithecus afarensis, which lived in Africa between about 4 million and 3 million years ago, and is the earliest known hominid.
Most scientists believe afarensis stood upright and walked on two feet, but they argue about whether it had ape-like agility in trees. The loss of that ability would suggest crossing a threshold toward a more human existence.
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On the Net: http://www.hmns.org/index.asp
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LUCY
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Two bombs in Ethiopia rebel region kill 1, wound 8
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - One civilian was killed and eight wounded in two bomb blasts in Ethiopia's remote Ogaden region, officials said on Monday, as Ogaden rebels and the government blamed each other for the explosions.
"Two suspects have been arrested," said a spokesman for Ethiopia's information ministry who declined to be named.
He said the attacks, which occurred on Sunday, targeted a marketplace and a church in Ogaden's capital Jijiga.
A senior adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) of staging the blasts to discredit the government.
"The two incidents clearly indicate that the ONLF are trying to hide their continued slaughter of civilians," Simon Bereket told Reuters.
"Our defence forces will take appropriate measures targeting the terrorist group."
But ONLF's London-based spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi denied the group's involvement.
"We believe it's the work ... of the security forces," he said without elaborating. "We have nothing to do with that. A church is a sacred place and we don't desecrate sacred places."
He accused the government of arming civilians to form militias as a counter-insurgency strategy against the ONLF.
The rebels say they are fighting for greater autonomy for their home region which borders Somalia. Addis Ababa says they are a terrorist group supported by arch-foe Eritrea.
The ONLF attracted international attention in April when it raided a Chinese-run oil field, killing 74 people.
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Comprehensive video coverage of Haile "Geb" Gebreselassie, arguably the greatest distance runner in the modern era, at the press conference following his victory at the 2007 NYC Half-Marathon.
(The Final Sprint)
Ethiopia - New Location, Same Result for Gebrselassie
By LIZ ROBBINS
Haile Gebrselassie stormed out of hilly Central Park and separated from his two competitors a few blocks down Seventh Avenue.
When he reached the strangely serene Times Square at 7:35 yesterday morning, Gebrselassie — an Ethiopian who is considered the world’s greatest distance runner — was alone and more than halfway to victory in the NYC Half-Marathon. He allowed himself to look up and around.
“Yesterday I was there, it was many cars, it was very crowded,” Gebrselassie said after the race. “Today — wow — only spectators, and the road was open.
“Ah,” he added, laughing, “that’s what I want.”
It seemed as if New York City’s most cacophonous space was shut down to make way for his parade.
Gebrselassie, 34, had not lost a half-marathon. Running in New York for the first time and racing the 13.1-mile distance for the eighth time, he kept that record going.
Just before the eight-mile mark, Gebrselassie broke away from Abdi Abdirahman of the United States and Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya. Gebrselassie then ran gracefully down the West Side Highway to finish in Battery Park City in 59 minutes 24 seconds.
“I’m so happy,” said Gebrselassie, who shattered the course record, established last year in the inaugural race, by 1:58. He ran the second-fastest half-marathon on United States soil, and his time was the second fastest of his career. Gebrselassie continues to succeed in every distance from 5 kilometers to the marathon.
“Right after the park, I said, O.K., this is my race,” Gebrselassie said, recalling how he quickly countered Abdirahman’s surge in the opening blocks of Seventh Avenue and took advantage of Cheruiyot’s ill-fated water stop.
As Abdirahman crossed the finish line in 1:00:29 to take second place, 1:05 behind Gebrselassie, he slapped his head in frustration. Abdirahman surged a little too early, he would lament. Gebrselassie quickly recovered and later said Abdirahman had told him to go.
“What do you mean, ‘Go’?” Gebrselassie said he wondered. He did not hesitate. “He ask me to go, I am going to go.”
Abdirahman said, “I knew he was the greatest, but I’m not afraid of him.”
Cheruiyot, the reigning champion of the Boston and Chicago Marathons, finished third in 1:00:58. He was taken to a hospital from the finish line because he said he felt weak and confused; he was released about an hour later, said his agent, Federico Rosa.
“He’s fine,” Rosa said, adding that the trip to the hospital was only a precaution because Cheruiyot sustained head and back injuries in October, when he slipped at the finish line in Chicago.
The men’s race may have had only brief drama, but the women’s race was suspenseful until the end. Hilda Kibet of Kenya outkicked the defending champion, Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, finishing in 1:10:32, only 1.15 seconds ahead. Nina Rillstone of New Zealand was third, 2.6 seconds back.
Of the 9,920 runners who finished (9,960 started), no one was more embraced at the end than Gebrselassie. Fervent Ethiopian fans, wearing the green, yellow and red of the country’s flag, waved flags and serenaded him with “Haile, Haile,” written by the Ethiopian singer-songwriter Teddy Afro.
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Gebrselassie patiently posed for pictures, signed copies of his biography, “The Greatest: The Haile Gebrselassie Story,” kissed his fans, did interviews and ran through the crowds, along with two bodyguards, to the awards ceremony.
Running alone must have seemed like a respite from the celebrity fishbowl. “Oh no, it looks like peace,” he said, “but it’s war.”
First he contended with the blistering pace Cheruiyot set in Central Park that left many behind, including a sleep-deprived Hendrick Ramaala of South Africa, the 2004 New York City Marathon winner, who finished 12th. Gebrselassie was also feeling the effects of jet lag; he had been awake since midnight Saturday. “He’s in better shape than all of us,” Ramaala said.
With a little more than three miles to go, Gebrselassie had become a speck on the horizon to Abdirahman.
“It’s embarrassing, but at the same time, you got to go home and train harder,” said Abdirahman, a native of Somalia and a United States citizen since 1999. He is a favorite to make the United States Olympic team in the marathon; the trials are Nov. 3 in New York.
Gebrselassie will be hoping to break the world marathon record on Sept. 30 in Berlin, where he is the defending champion, so he will not be making his debut in the New York City Marathon on Nov. 4. “But 2008 is a possibility,” he said.
He is a two-time Olympic champion in the 10,000 meters, has set 22 world records and has won three marathons. What makes him a champion? “I’m never satisfied,” he said.
Even yesterday, with his half-marathon streak secure and with three miles to go, his mind jumped to the next finish line.
“When I knew I was going to win,” he said, “then I start to think about Berlin.”
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Teddy Afro
EthioBlog is the first Ethiopian blog. During the June and November 2005 Carnage in Addis Ababa, nazret.com was the first website to post first hand eyewitness accounts from ground zero in Addis. Be part of the largest Ethiopian News website and join in as a contributor.
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