Ethiopia blocking release of German hostages

Ethiopian rebels blamed Addis Ababa for "stifling" the release of two German tourists kidnapped in a gun fight three weeks ago, accusing government troops of attacks in Ethiopia's Afar region.

The Ethiopian government is "stifling every step of our efforts to get the two Germans to safe area... by launching a fresh attack against us," the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF) said in a statement late Wednesday.

Two Germans were seized in the bloody attack on the slopes of the famed Erta Ale volcano which left at least five people dead, including two Germans, two Austrians and one Hungarian.

Last month, ARDUF rebels said they were holding the missing Germans and supported their safe release, but warned that "any military engagement with ARDUF would... endanger the lives of the two German citizens."

On Wednesday, the rebel group said if the kidnapped tourists were killed in the violence, the Ethiopian government would be responsible for their deaths.

It claimed there had been repeated clashes between Ethiopian forces and ARDUF rebels since the January 18 attack.

"If these two remaining German (nationals) are killed in the fighting, Ethiopian regime will bear... responsibility for the killing," ARDUF said, adding it wanted to release the tourists over to tribal elders.

"ARDUF will do its best to release the two German citizens unconditionally, as soon as the Afar elders arrive to the designated area to receive them," the statement added.

Ethiopia has blamed arch-rival Eritrea for backing the ARDYUF rebels and claim the missing tourists are being held across the border in remote desert areas of Eritrea claims Asmara have fiercely denied.

ARDUF has been fighting a low-level insurgency in the northern region near the tense Eritrean border to end what it says is "political marginalisation and economic deprivation" by Addis Ababa. The group claims to have no links to Eritrea.

In 2007, ARDUF rebels seized five European tourists and eight Ethiopians. The Europeans were released after 12 days to the Eritrean government, while the Ethiopians were freed almost two months later. -AFP

http://www.thenewage.co.za/42927-1019-5 ... n_hostages

Secret Wikileaks Cable Reveals Recent Bombings in Addis Ababa the Work of the Woyane minority regime in Ethiopia





Zenawi's contempt for Ethiopian lives and his deceptive nature exposed in Wiki files

The first issue that hits the nerve of the Addis Ababa junta was the release of the file that exposes the pattern and behavior of the Ethiopian security forces on how they plant bombs in the city then later blame on the opposition and neighboring Eritrea.

Because this latest revelation is to their complete disadvantage specially at a time when they were seeking, in a frenzied campaign together with Susan Rice, for more severe economic sanctions on Eritrea under the pretext that Eritrea planned a terror bomb attack during an African Union summit last January in Addis Ababa.

The report from a 2006 US Embassy cable reference id: #06ADDISABABA2708, said:

“An embassy source, as well as clandestine reporting, suggests that the bombing may have in fact been the work of the Government of Ethiopia (GOE) security forces.”

The Wikileaks report goes on,

“A typically reliable information source contacted Post to report that” the bodies of three men found at the bomb sites were “men [who] had been picked up by police a week prior, kept in detention and tortured. He said police then left the men in a house and detonated explosives nearby, killing 3 of them.”

This high profile US government report irrefutably witnessed the pattern and behavior of the minority regimes identical lies about a nearly identical “terrorist attacks” that are staged time and again in different parts of Ethiopia in the hope of getting some short-lived propaganda gains on its opponents by playing the blame game.

However, this also raises some serious questions about the credibility of the recently released report by the UN Monitoring Group for Eritrea and Somalia which blames Eritrean and the OLF for the January bombing attempt at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.