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By Staff Reporter
September 21, 2020 (Ezega.com) – Jawar Mohammed, a prominent opposition leader, told a federal high court that the terrorism charges against him were “politically motivated” to exclude him from the upcoming elections.
The Federal Attorney General charged Jawar Mohammed and 23 other people with multiple crimes, including terrorism charges. Eighteen of the defendants, including Jawar Mohammed and Bekele Gerba, appeared in court on Monday.
“I am proud to face terrorism charges,” he told the court. Jawar had faced similar charges in absentia while working as an Oromo activist abroad three years ago.
The ruling party is afraid of losing the next elections in the Oromia region if I compete there and that led it to file terrorism charges against me, he argued.
Jawar was arrested in July for allegedly instigating violence following the death of prominent singer Hachalu Hundessa, a defender of the Oromo ethnic group.
The Federal Attorney General accused Jawar of recruiting six members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and another 200 from the Qimant and Agew ethnic groups and sending them to Egypt for military training.
The Attorney General also accused Jawar of recruiting 15 other youths from the Harar and Arsi areas and giving them instructions to assassinate five ethnic Amhara patriarchs and two leaders of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
The Federal Attorney General accused Jawar of recruiting and facilitating training for Oromo youth who participated in the July violence that left more than 200 people dead and another 100 injured.
Jawar is also accused of forcibly returning Hachalu Hundessa’s body from the city of Burayu to Addis Ababa and ordering his bodyguards to shoot a policeman.
Jawar said the indictment against Esikinder Nega, another opposition leader with terrorism offenses, is politically motivated to prevent the defendant from participating and winning the elections in Addis Ababa.
Eskinder Nega, leader of the Balderas por la Democracia Genuina party, was accused of inciting clashes and seeking to overthrow the government by violent means.
Eskinder and seven others were charged with terrorism offenses and are currently being held in Kality, where he had been detained for seven years for similar offenses. He was released two years ago amid a radical reform by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Jawar asked the court to observe a minute of silence for what he called “heroes of the Oromo people” and Hachalu Hundessa before the court hearing on Monday.
The court also charged Oromo Media Network (OMN) director Dejene Gutema, the Ethiopian diplomat cosulate in Los Angeles Berhanemeskel Abebe and Tsegaye Regassa, who currently lives in Australia, of abstaining terrorism offenses.
The charges against Bekele Gerba and other defendants say they had instigated inter-ethnic clashes in the Oromia region and attempted to overthrow the government by force.
More than 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured, and private and public property worth billions of birr were destroyed in what the government said was an orchestrated attack in Ethiopia’s Oromo region.
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