“It’s cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”           - Frederick Forsyth, in ‘The Day of the Jackal”

Kiflu Hussain Global News Centre

(DALLAS)  According to a Jan 14 2015 breaking news on ESATi, Ethiopian Satellite Television, which is banned from viewing in Ethiopia, the regime took out two prisoners on the wee hours from the dungeon it incarcerated them and rained bullets on them. The duo, named Colonel Demesew Anteneh and Colonel Alemu Getnet were convicted of plotting a coup d’état by the notorious Kangaroo court known for churning out harsh sentences on dissidents.  Accordingly, they were condemned to death in 2009.

What ESAT’s news cannot ascertain, despite quoting a reliable source about the incident in which the two Colonels sustained injury from being fired upon, was that whether it was an execution of adeath sentence “badly” gone wrong. Or whether the regime which has become increasingly cruel with no attempt to cloak its cruelty like it used to for the sake of its Western backers, raised its ante for torture, and thus started ricocheting bullets on inmates.

On the other hand, as this writer knows from first hand experience during his incarceration from 2005 up to 2006, the questions raised above sound idle speculation even to him. As pointed out in a write-up under the title “What it means to be an inmate in Kaliti”ii on July8, 2007, the regime has given carte blanch to its loyal Cadres to maim and kill anyone they find a threat to their ethnocentric kleptocracy, irrespective of whether their target is within the confines of the various concentration camps throughout the country or outside of it.Thus,the T-TPLF (the Thugtatorshipof Tigrai People Liberation Front)  as aptly described by Prof. Alemayehu Gebremariam aka Almariam,the cruelty inflicted on the Colonels can neither be anews nor a surprise.

Any correlation between the Colonelsfate and Andargachew’s predicament?

Since Colonel Alemu and Demesewhad been detained along with other senior officers on the pretext of plotting acoup d’état in collaboration with the banned Ginbot 7 in 2008 or 2009; and since other civilians were also implicated and subjected to detention and torture, among them an 80 year old man who is the father of a renowned dissident whose son had been in exile for more than three decades; and since his son named Andargachew, alias ‘Andy’ Tsege, a British national as well, had been sentenced to death in absentia which in effect made him the most wanted man by the regime in Ethiopia; and since Andy had been abducted in Sanaa and whisked off to Addis Ababa in June 2014 while on a transit flight from Dubai to Asmara; and since his extraordinary rendition coupled with his British nationality increasingly forced the British politicians to increase the pressure on the banana republic they’ve been bankrolling, according to The iii Independent of January 19,2015 which reported about a delegation of British MPs who will be visiting Ethiopia in a bid to secure the release of Andy, the authorities in Ethiopia might have reacted in their typical infantile politics which has been the hallmark of their rule for nearly the past 24 years.

It might have dawned on the thugtatorship of the TPLF that it ought to surrender Andy to the Brits, if and when they mean business.However, before it let Andy slip out of his hand whom it considers a big fish and whom it has been showing around like a trophy, it might have wanted to ensure his silence like some former prisoners of conscience gone mute after their release was negotiated.

Thus, on top of the horrible torture technique it applied on him so far, it might have used the two Colonels implicated with Ginbot 7 to which Andy was the secretary general. It could be blackmail that we would kill them the moment you open your mouth after your release. Or some elements in thugtatorship of the TPLF might have been frustrated by a recent order not to torture Andy anymore. Thus, to quench their warped thirst for torture might have gone to the inmates who have been languishing in the dungeon for over six years.

At any rate, it’s difficult to explain depravity unless one is depraved enough.

i  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMamVy9OcS4

ii http://www.ethiomedia.com/atop/kaliti_prison.html

iii http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-mps-to-visit-ethiopia-in-bid-to-secure-release-of-andy-tsege-9980791.html

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Kiflu Hussain says his passion for writing came from reading, and that it’s inevitable that the more one reads, the more one develops the urge to write. Kiflu has published articles in Ethiopia on the English Reporter, then a weekly newspaper along with a few Amharic articles on the defunct Addis Zena. It was after he and his family found refuge in Uganda, that he began contributing writings to the local papers and various websites such as Daily Monitor, Uganda Record, The New Vision, Ethioquestnews, Garowe Online, WardheerNews etc.  Today Kiflu resides in the United States.

We at GlobalNewsCentre.com are honored to carry this gentleman’s work and we hope that in the process, western people may come to appreciate the struggle of refugees throughout the world.

You can write to Kiflu at: [email protected]