A bad week for dictators

Pinochet is dead, Castro is on his deathbed, and Mengistu Haile Mariam - the Ethopian Marxist who used famine as a weapon against his own people - has been convicted of genocide:

Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist dictator, known as the African Pol Pot, became the first fallen leader to be found guilty yesterday of genocide in his own country after a 12-year trial.

Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former President, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991, was accused along with top members of his military Government of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. The period was marked by vicious crackdowns on opponents, disastrous wars with neighbouring countries and rebel groups and devastating famines in which starvation was used to force peasants into submission.

“Members of the Derg [Government] who are present in court today and those who are being tried in absentia have conspired to destroy a political group and kill people with impunity,” the presiding judge, Medhen Kiros, said.

The genocide verdict, which carries a death sentence, was passed two votes to one by the three-judge panel. Human rights groups welcomed the verdict, although President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has made it clear that he is not prepared to entertain any extradition requests.

Tyrants must stick together, after all. (Never heard of Mengistu? That might be because he was backed by the USSR, not the Great Satan.)

Damian P.

Posted by damian at December 13, 2006 07:18 AM