Captured TPLF leaders appeared in court in the capital Addis Ababa

Police told court that captured TPLF leaders attempted to overthrow the constitutional order through violence 

borkena
January 15, 2021

Twenty top  captured Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leaders on Friday appeared in a Federal court in the capital Addis Ababa. They appeared in Arada first instance court. 

The Federal Police told the Federal court that Sebhat Nega, Abadi Zemu, Abraham Tekeste, Keriya Ibrahim, and seventeen others attempted to overthrow the constitutional order through violence. 

Furthermore, police are accusing them of organizing an illegal armed group in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and attacking the Ethiopian Defense Force — an incident that led to a fully fledged war that lasted for three weeks. 

Establishing contact with other countries — outside their constitutional rights — to collect funds for the war they planned against the Federal government and firing rockets at Bahir Dar and Gondar International airports — an action that claimed innocent lives, are some of the charges they will be facing as reported by Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporate (EBC). Before the end of the war, the Ethiopian government did not disclose that lives were lost due to the rocket attacks at Bahir Dar and Gondar Airport. 

The Federal Police Investigation department also told the court that the nature of the crime they committed is a complicated one and that fourteen more days is needed to complete the investigation which the court granted. 

A video released on the state media shows the captured TPLF leaders with invigorated physical condition compared to the one shown when they arrived in Addis Ababa. And the government distributed to them an active wear – a privilege that is not extended to other suspects of a crime that are in police custody.

Sebhat Nega and nine other TPLF key officials were captured last week during a search operation in the wilderness along Tekeze river , and flown to Addis Ababa on Friday (last week) in an Air Force plane. 

It is to be recalled that the Ethiopian Defense Force announced earlier this week that three top TPLF leaders (Seyoum Mesfin, Abay Tsehaye and Asmelashe Woldeselassie) were killed in a cave near the Tekeze river during a joint operation by the Defense Force and the Federal police. 

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