ADDIS ABABA – Following the heavily guarded pre-trial hearing against the 40 individuals alleged to have been plotting to assassinate government officials, security officials have set up various checkpoints on roads leading up to many parts of the northern region, eye witnesses said.
On Monday May 11, 2009, the Arada Bench of the First Instance Court gave prosecutors 14 additional days for investigations into the cases of the 40 individuals, all of them the government alleged to belong to the “Ginbot 7” organization led by former Addis Ababa Mayor-elect Dr. Berhanu Nega.
Subsequently, the police have issued a “wanted” list of three individuals named Alebel Amare Wasie, Mohammed Jemal Abamecha and Awoke Afework. According to the government news agency ENA, Mohammed Jemal Abamecha has since given himself up to the police while the whereabouts of the two remained at large. Police assumed all the three were implicated in “crimes” related to the alleged terror plot.
According to eye witnesses who requested to remain anonymous, security check points particularity in vicinities leading up to the towns of Gondar and Bahir Dar are intense since last Monday with every passenger forced to pass through malicious police searches.
“It wasn’t a simple search, it was a search with an intension to humiliate and frighten everyone passing through,” said a Gondar University student who was on his way to Addis Ababa for a medical follow-up at Black Lion Hospital. “I was sick beyond any point to justify how grave, but they (police officers) showed me no mercy. I can’t believe this has happened to me in my own country. Is freedom of movement under threat too?” he questioned.
Random police searches are not new to many Ethiopians throughout the country and are notoriously vicious with police often blamed for using excessive measures.
