Two convicted Ethiopian war criminals who have been hiding inside an Italian embassy for nearly 30 years have had their sentences commuted, meaning they are likely to finally leave. Addis Tedla and Berhanu Bayeh were senior officials in the communist Derg regime, which ruled Ethiopia from the 1970s, until they fled into the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa on the night of May 27th, 1991. In 2015, the Italian embassy confirmed the surviving men were still inside, telling Vice News they had never been granted asylum and didn’t seem to have a lawyer. The Derg regime was led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, an 83-year-old who still lives in exile in Zimbabwe, where he was initially granted sanctuary by former president Robert Mugabe. A director in the Addis Ababa federal court attorney general’s office confirmed both of the men in the embassy have had their sentences commuted, and they will be paroled.

Source: Ethiopian News December 29, 2020 00:56 UTC