34 Ethiopian opposition backers held on weapons charges
Oct 19, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Police have arrested 34 members and supporters of Ethiopia’s largest opposition group, saying they were found with a cache of weapons and were suspected of planning violence, according to police media reports Wednesday.
The detainees were caught in Oromia, the state at the center of dissent against the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front, with 23 rifles, five pistols, three hand grenades, other firearms and 626 rounds of ammunition, regional police Commander Tura Shaku said.
The arrests came days after Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the head of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy of treason. He said that the coalition had committed “serious” crimes in the run-up to the May 15 elections the opposition accuses Meles’s party of stealing. Mele’s security forces killed scores protesting the conduct of the vote in demonstrations days after the balloting.
Opposition spokesman Debebe Eshete said they were trying to ascertain if there had been any arrests. The coalition says its members are being persecuted.
The state-run Ethiopian News Agency said the arrests came after police received a tip “on the detainees’ plans of violence.”
Last month, 43 members of the opposition were arrested by police in northern Ethiopia on the eve of a public demonstration.
Police arrested the latest opposition supporters in Arsi, in Oromia, some 250 kilometers east of the capital, Addis Ababa. The state, Ethiopia’s largest, was the scene of bitterly contested elections and the shooting death of an opposition politician who had won a parliament seat.
(AP/ST)