ETHIOPIA. COURT SENTENCES SENIOR MENGISTU REGIME OFFICIALS TO DIE

two senior officials from Ethiopia's Soviet-backed communist government were sentenced to death for atrocities committed during the 1974 to 1991 rule of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
After a marathon 11-year trial, Ethiopia's Federal High Court found Mengistu's former security and intelligence chiefs, along with eight other officials, guilty of "inhuman persecution" of dissidents during the so-called "Derg" regime.
Colonel Tesfaye Woldeselassie, the ex-security minister, and General Legesse Belayneh, who ran the Central Investigation Department, were sentenced to die by firing squad or by hanging.
The eight others were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, the court said in its verdict that contained graphic accounts of torture, abuse and murder of thousands of detainees.
In its ruling, the court said Tesfaye and Legesse "played prominent roles in the inhuman persecution of political dissidents by setting up and coordinating institutions of torture."
At one such facility, known as Bermuda, "victims of excessive torture were wrapped (in) plastic sheeting to protect the torturers from getting splashed with blood or pus of the victims in successive round of tortures," it said.
"Apart from the routine whiplashes and beatings, victims also used to be electrocuted," it said, citing witness testimony that prisoners were then often covered in a chemically treated cloth that caused temporary blindness.
The trial was one of several proceedings attempting to bring to justice the top leadership, senior officials and lower-ranking cadres of Mengistu's regime that was blamed for the deaths of more than 100,000 people.
Many trials were still ongoing, including that of Mengistu himself, who had lived in exile in Zimbabwe since he was ousted in 1991.