An Ethiopian judge adjourned Tuesday a trial launched by prosecutors seeking a death sentence for Mengistu Haile Marian, an exiled former dictator already sentenced to life in prison.
Judge Desta Gebru adjourned the trial till July 3 after defence lawyers filed their own appeal calling for Mengistu's life sentence to be lifted and lesser terms for the ex-dictator's aides.
Hearings for the prosecutors' appeal, filed last week, were scheduled to begin Tuesday but have been adjourned until next month so both appeals can be considered at once, the judge said.
"We appeal not just against the prosecutor's appeal, but also against the life-imprisonment sentence handed out earlier. We ask the court to review both cases at the same time," said Girmasellasie Araya, a defence lawyer.
An Ethiopian court sentenced the former dictator in absentia last January to life in prison for genocide and other crimes. Mengistu has lived in exile in Zimbabwe since being overthrown in 1991.
The prosecution had called for Mengistu to be executed after he was convicted at the end of the marathon 12-year trial that ended on December 12.
But Justice Nur Mohammed said at the time that the court believed other punishments were sufficient.
The sentence followed the Ethiopian Federal High Court's conviction of Mengistu and 11 of his top aides on 211 counts of genocide, homicide, illegal imprisonment and illegal property seizure.
The trial related to atrocities committed during the 1977-78 "Red Terror" period when tens of thousands of people were killed or disappeared in Mengistu's bid to turn Ethiopia into a Soviet-style workers' state.
Zimbabwe has always ruled out the possibility of extraditing the 69-year-old former Ethiopian leader, who ruled until 1991.
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It is time to engage in vast intimidation and massive distributions of retributions as well as threats left and right. What is premptive attack and surprise assaults for if you don't use them to frighten your potential opponents?
However, the more justice and freedom are being attacked repeatedely, the more they become hardened, sharpened and intimidation resistant just like the wellknown toughened modern day hospital bacteria such as the MSRA,VRE,MDR-TB,etc. Once being killed with impunity by man made antibiotics, now they developed complete resistance and are able revive and keep their killing capacities. That is only natural. You can't be always the killer with unending and unchallenged skills and capacities of killings and manufacturing death. That may not be even in the original intention of nature itself.
However, in the case of the TPLF one may be reduced to flogging dead horses in the process of shadow boxing and fighting with an old wind mill. It can change nothing.
Qualitative and quantitative changes only come to take place when democracy replaces dictatorship. That is how nations became free, indpendent, equal, just, developed, prosperous and achieved worthy, peaceful, well being and wellfare for all.
June 12th, 2007 at 4:49 PM