ARDUF, which has repeatedly denied any involvement in the abduction of the tourists and Ethiopians, said the Ethiopian government had the ultimate responsibility to free the kidnapped citizens.
“From the beginning, EPLF is a terrorist entity which transformed itself into a terrorist regime,” ARDUF said, adding Eritrea was busy spreading violence and poisoning the political climate, aiding and abating the rogue and terrorist forces. Eritrea is a breeding ground for all kinds of ills in our region.”
According to AFP, the Ethiopian government denied on Monday that Afar rebels were behind the abduction despite the Eritrean television pictures, and once again laid the blame on Eritrea.
ARDUF said the kidnapping was just one among many of the crimes and atrocities being committed by the terrorist regime against our people.
The attacks Eritrea wages against our people deserves the response of the Ethiopian government, and ARDUF is willing to join forces in getting rid of the ‘terrorist’ regime in the region, the Front said in its statement.
Eritrean TV on Monday showed the footage of Musa Ibrahim Hamaddu, the supposed leader of ARDUF who through a translator said the eight Ethiopians were safe and well. “No one has died, they are safe. They are our people – we are Ethiopians, they are Ethiopians,” Musa told AFP in Asmara, speaking in the Afar language through a translator, according to an AFP report.
ARDUF, which considers itself an Ethiopian rebel group fighting for the restoration of the Red Sea coast, denies western media reports that its political goal is to create a separate state comprising Afars in Ethiopia (where over 87 percent of them live), Eritrea and Djibouiti.
ARDUF, which tried to join Ethiopian forces against Eritrea during the 1998-2000 War once again called on the Meles regime to pull joint forces against what it called the “terrorist Eritrean regime.”
“The removal of the terrorist regime of Eritrea would lead to a permanent peace and development not only on our country but also in the entire region. This is the only way out and ARDUF is lending itself to the forefront of the struggle to purge the terrorist regime of Eritrea,” ARDUF said.
ADDIS ABABA – An Afar rebel group on Thursday accused Eritrea for the second time in 10 days of being the mastermind behind the abductions of five Europeans whose 12-day ordeal ended two days ago.
The Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Party (ARDUF) – which fights both Asmara and Addis Ababa as two groups whose joint war resulted in the loss of Ethiopia’s Red Sea coast – dismissed as absurd an Eritrean government report that claimed the “five European citizens were abducted by an Ethiopian opposition front known as ARDUF.”
ARDUF, which has never recognized Eritrea as an independent state – first accused Asmara on March 5, saying the abductions were carried out by members of the Eritrean army who had crossed into Ethiopia and kidnapped the tourists and eight Ethiopians at gunpoint.
Released on Tuesday in Asmara, the Europeans were reunited with their families in Addis Ababa, although the eight Ethiopians remain missing.
In 1995, ARDUF kidnapped 13 Italian tourists who had ventured on a camel safari into the Danakil Desert from Eritrea. A few weeks later, ARDUF released the tourists unharmed, warning that their only crime was carrying an ‘Eritrean entry visa,’ instead of an Ethiopian.
ARDUF’s contempt for the Asmara authorities provoked the anger of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who responded in 1996 with earth-scorched military operations that levelled several Afar settlements.
When in 1998 Eritrea invaded Ethiopia, ARDUF declared its solidarity with the Ethiopian Defense Forces, and demanded the TPLF regime to re-consider restoring Ethiopia’s 1000-km coast spanning areas from Dahlak Islands in the north to Djibouti in the south. Meles rejected the proposal, claiming the entire Red Sea, including the Port of Assab, was a sovereign Eritrean territory.
After the war, which Meles aborted in favor of Eritrea, TPLF leaders accused Meles of being an Eritrean mercenary. However, the poorly-organized TPLF officials were no match for the powerful Eritrean group which purged, arrested and killed those who woke up to the crime. That group controls state power to this very day in Ethiopia.
In 1993, an ARDUF delegation traveled to New York City and lodged a protest with the United Nations. ARDUF warned the global body that it should not be an accomplice of two criminal groups that clearly fought for Eritrean independence, and vengefully turned Ethiopia into a landlocked nation.
