MILLIONS of dollars raised through Bob Geldof’s worldwide Live Aid project were siphoned from the mouths of Africa’s starving into the arms of guerillas fighting the then Ethiopian government, according to a former senior Ethiopian rebel leader who has admitted taking part in the scam.
Mr Araya, who fell out with the rebel leadership in late 1989 and was forced to flee the country before spending a decade in African refugee programs waiting for Australia to accept him, now lives in a small flat in Perth’s Doubleview.
He said instead of the cash and food being handed out to the poor and dying, the vast majority of it went into the pockets and bellies of the warlords, who were also being supported by the CIA. Taking on the role of a Muslim merchant, he convinced the authorities that he was a pivotal man to deal with. He had access to vast amounts of cash and food.
“I was acting as a merchant, as a Muslim, and they (NGOs) don’t know me because my name was Mohammed,” he said. “The money, much of it, the leaders put it in their accounts in Western Europe . . . Some of it was used to buy weapons. The people did not get half a kilogram of maize.
“I received a great amount of money from the NGOs and automatically it was taken by (rebel leaders). This is a heavy trick, assigned by the top leaders.”
When the NGOs wanted to check on whether the food was being processed and organised to be distributed into regions, Mr Araya would show them warehouses full of sacks stacked on top of each other. “But if you go there, half of the warehouse is stacked full of sand,” he said.
