ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s attorney general on Friday filed terrorism charges against five people accused of trying to “kill the prime minister” at a huge rally in the capital in June, barely two months after the reformist leader took office. The charges say the five acted on the premise that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is not popular among Oromos, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, and wanted to pave the way for the once-banned Oromo Liberation Front. That group’s leaders recently returned after Abiy’s government in July removed it from a terror list and invited all exiled groups to participate in politics. Abiy, Ethiopia’s first prime minister from the Oromo ethnic group, has announced sweeping and largely popular reforms since taking office in April, but ethnic tensions in Africa’s second most populous country pose his biggest challenge. It said the suspects wore T-shirts bearing the prime minister’s image to disguise themselves as supporters.

Source: National Post September 28, 2018 09:05 UTC