Ethiopia to Charge Dozens Over Coordinated Killings of Officials

(Bloomberg) --

Ethiopian authorities will charge dozens of people over the coordinated killings of state officials in June that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed labeled a coup attempt.

The planned prosecutions mark the conclusion of a four-month investigation into the most serious attack on Ethiopia’s leadership since military rule ended in 1987. Many of those who face charges were members of “the government structure,“ Attorney General Berhanu Tsegaye said Wednesday on the ruling-party linked Fana Broadcasting Corp.

Berhanu’s office will charge 45 people in the northern city of Bahir Dar, capital of the Amhara region, and 13 in the federal capital Addis Ababa over the June killings, he said.

Assailants killed the head of the army, the president of the Amhara region and at least four other state officials in the assaults on June 22.

The bodyguard of slain former army Chief of Staff Se’are Mekonnen, Colonel Tigabu Mesafint, received orders from retired Brigadier-General Aseminew Tsige to kill Se’are in Addis Ababa after killings of officials in Bahir Dar, according to Berhanu. Aseminew was killed in a firefight with government forces in Amhara in June, while Tigabu was apprehended.

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