ETHIOPIA PARDONS 178 DEFENSE FORCE MEMBERS SENTENCED TO DEATH

September 12, 2024:

Ethiopia’s Defense Force announced on September 10, 2024 that it has pardoned 178 ethnic Tigrayan members of the Ethiopian Defense Force, who were sentenced to death by court martial in connection with the November 2020 attack on the Northern Command in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
They have been in prison for more than three years after being captured during the government’s “law enforcement operation” in the Tigray region, launched in December 2020. The pardon was granted during the Ethiopian New Year after their cases were presented to the government’s amnesty board.
It was also indicated that they expressed remorse for the crime they committed and submitted applications to the Defense Force and Amnesty Board requesting pardon. They were pardoned “in accordance with Proclamation 840/2006, Article 3,” according to the Defense Force’s update.
The statement from the Defense Force noted, “They committed crimes against the army and public interest,” violating “the constitutional mission they were given.”
A decision was made to release them as of September 10, 2024, on the eve of the Ethiopian New Year. The Defense Force did not mention if there was any decision regarding their reinstatement as members of the Defense Force, though some were in senior military command positions.
The attack on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Force triggered a bloody war between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Federal Government.
An estimated one million people, including civilians, are believed to have been killed as a result of the war. In addition to Tigray, the Afar and Amhara regions were also devastated, with a high number of civilian casualties and extensive destruction of infrastructure and public institutions. Damages amounting to hundreds of billions of birr were reported in the Amhara and Afar regions.
The war officially ended in November 2022 with the signing of the Pretoria Peace Agreement, the core of which required the TPLF to disarm its forces. However, the TPLF still reportedly has over 270,000 armed combatants, despite political divisions within the organization.
The TPLF has recently ventured into another military move in the Raya and Telemt area where it displaced tens of thousands of residents. The Federal government has been criticized for allowing the TPLF to make such a move against the Pretoria agreement.