Ethiopia’s attorney general has concluded investigations into crimes committed in the Somali state, announcing on Friday that the former head of the region and dozens of other officials are to be charged with plotting to incite a civil war and ordering abuses including beheadings.
Abdi Mohammed Omer was arrested after three days of deadly violence in the regional capital Jijiga in August. Rights groups said his administration had set out to provoke ethnic bloodshed and had ordered a paramilitary force to attack minorities.
After a five-month investigation, prosecutors had decided to charge Abdi and 45 other officials, 40 of them who are still on the run, the Federal Attorney’s Office said. Abdi has made no public statement about the charges.
“Horrific crimes have taken place. It had become a country where victims’ throats were slit, others burnt alive or buried alive and left for dead,” the Office’s communications director, Zinabu Tunu, told reporters.
Fifty-eight people died and 266 others were injured during the violence, including a priest set on fire inside a church, Zinabu added. Encouraging ethnic strife amounted to inciting a civil war, the office said.
Abdi Mohammed Omer spent more than a decade in charge of the remote and largely lawless region on the border with Somalia, much of that time spent trying to crush separatist ONLF rebels. Rights groups regularly accused his administration of abuses including torture during the fight with insurgents.