Ex-boss of Ethiopia's notorious Jail Ogaden arrested. Activists say the jail, in the Somali region of Ethiopia, was the site of particularly brutal torture. (Photo: Google Earth)
BBC
The former head of a notorious Ethiopian prison has been arrested and is expected to face trial.
Hassan Ismail Ibrahim, also known as Hassan Dhere, was arrested in neighbouring Somalia in a town where he had been hiding, following a tip-off.
Campaigners say inmates were routinely tortured at “Jail Ogaden”, which he ran in Ethiopia’s Somali region.
Many prisoners were accused of being linked to the separatist group the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
But that group signed a peace deal with the government in October, following the appointment of Abiy Ahmed as prime minister.
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Financial Times on Ethiopia’s Displacement Crisis
In total, 2.9m people were displaced by December 2018, more than those dislodged in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan combined, according to estimates published this month. (Financial Times)
Ethiopian ethnic violence has forced almost 3m to flee homes
On a drenched field in southern Ethiopia, hundreds of members of the ethnic Gedeo community are huddled together with nothing to do but wait. It had rained all night and the ragged shelters they had strung together were sinking in the mud.
“We can’t go back,” said Haptemu Mariam, 28, a father of six who fled his home in the Guji area of the neighbouring Oromia region last year. “The Guji people are dangerous,” he said, referring to a group with which his people had lived peacefully until a recent flare up of violence between the two groups.
About 700,000 people have been displaced by the Gedeo-Guji dispute, according to the UN. Yet it is just one of many inter-ethnic conflicts raging in Ethiopia that have given the country an unenviable distinction: last year more people fled their homes there than in any other nation on earth.
In total, 2.9m people were displaced by December 2018, more than those dislodged in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan combined, according to estimates published this month.
The upsurge in communal violence has coincided with the early days of Abiy Ahmed’s tenure as prime minister and is arguably the greatest threat to his lofty ambitions.
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Related:
Ethiopia Tops List of Countries with Displaced People – The Economist
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