ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — It’s been exactly a month now since at least 41 people, including an 80-year-old father of an opposition leader, have been arrested, suspected, allegedly of a coup attempt against the Meles regime.
Within days of their arrest the coup attempt was turned into assassination attempts instead. According to the minister of information Bereket Simon, Ethiopia’s political system is such that it is now immune to coup d’etats.
Since their arrest the suspects never saw their families. But what is now unraveling is that amongst the initial people arrested featured the wife and 2 year old daughter of one the defendants. They were in the central prison for two weeks.
Then the wife of a colonel wanted by the government is also in prison, unable to see her relatives.
Then we found out that people have been arrested from Bahir Dar, Lalibella and Harar, and that most of those arrested are the main bread winners in their families, leaving their loved ones behind without any income.
We saw today the police making every effort for the public not to see who’s coming out of the car at the court, and preventing the defendants to wave at their loved ones. Everyone was shocked by their behavior.
We were told that even before the hearing today, the police knew they were given two more weeks to gather evidence.
Apparently, the police said it was the end of their investigation. If so, why are they given another 2-week to gather evidence?
The blatant abuse of power by the authorities today proved that the whole story is a smoke screen and seems to develop as days go by, like a bad movie script.
All the families have been denied their constitutional right to visit their relatives. No one is willing to grant them, and the government pretends it doesn’t know? Even during the CUD trial this didn’t happen.
As for the shortage of electrical power, it looks more and more as if we are on the verge of a total blackout: all major factories are temporarily disconnected from the electric network, and we’re left in the dark, literally.
(Report by Ethiopian Review associate in Addis Ababa)
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