ADDIS ABABA (Halbeeg News) – The former President of the Somali Regional state in Ethiopia, Abdi Mohamud Omar (Abdi Iley) has accused the current administration in administration of arresting and torturing his defence witnesses.
Speaking to BBC Amharic, Abdi said 5 of his witnesses who were defending him were arrested and tortured in the last three days,
The witnesses who defended Abdi Iley were said to have been arrested and beaten to death after they appeared in court last Tuesday.
Late 2018, Iley was forced to resign from his post after hundreds of military soldiers took control of state’s capital Jigjiga.
Mohamud, also popularly referred to as Abdi Illey, has been in federal custody since he was forced out of office. He has been charged for inciting violence that plunged the region into deadly chaos in August 20018. He is charged along with over 40 others for similar charges.
The Somali region, also known as Ogaden, is the second-largest and has been bedevilled by conflict lasting three decades with the government fighting the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) that is seeking secession of the oil-rich region.
Ethiopia discovered an estimated 4.7 trillion cubic feet of gas and about 13.6 million barrels of associated liquids at the Calub and Hilala gas fields in the Ogaden Basin about four decades ago. The country, however, is yet to begin exploiting these resources due to communal conflicts and lack of infrastructure.
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