Abiy nabs ex-deputy intelligence chief
ETHIOPIA said yesterday it had arrested the former deputy intelligence chief after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration launched a crackdown this week on senior security officials suspected of human rights abuses and corruption.
Also yesterday, state-affiliated television Fana Broadcasting said police had arrested the head of the security division at state-owned Ethio Telecom network.
Since Monday more than 60 officials, some from the intelligence services and some from the military-run industrial conglomerate METEC, have been arrested. None have been charged.
Fana Broadcasting said Gudeta Olana, head of security at Ethio Telecom, had also been apprehended by police. It gave no reason for the arrest.
The detentions have been broadly welcomed by rights groups and opposition politicians as a first step by Abiy towards fulfilling pledges made when he took office in April to tackle impunity and seek justice for past crimes by the government.
“Former deputy of NISS and Federal Police Commission Commissioner General Yared Zerihun has been apprehended by police,” attorney-general Berhanu Tsegaye said yesterday.
The whereabouts of former intelligence chief Getachew Assefa are unknown and the attorney-general declined at a news conference on Monday to say whether there was an arrest warrant for him.
Analysts and diplomats say the arrests are a “full frontal assault on the establishment”. Though Abiy, 42, began sacking senior officials upon taking office, this week’s detentions have picked up the pace of his stated efforts to rein in the security services and tackle economic mismanagement and other problems.
Abiy is Ethiopia’s first leader from its majority Oromo ethnic group. He was chosen by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, after three years of street protests and strikes piled pressure on it to reform.
Kinfe Dagnew, a brigadier general in Ethiopia’s army and former chief executive of METEC, was arrested on Tuesday close to the border with Sudan and Eritrea.