Italy has welcomed the pardon issued by an Ethiopian court to two ex-members of Mengistu Hailemariam's military junta, who lived in the Italian embassy for 29 years during the longest diplomatic asylum saga in history.
"This puts an end – in the desired direction – to a long-standing situation that began in 1991," foreign minister Luigi Di Maio said in a statement on Monday.
"Many thanks to the Ethiopian Authorities for granting probation to Berhanu Bayeh and Addis Tedla, two senior officials of Ethiopia’s former Mengistu military regime who were sentenced to capital punishment and have been sheltered for almost 30 years in Italian embassy in Addis Abeba," tweeted deputy foreign minister Emanuela Del Re.
Bayeh, 82, was foreign minister from 1986-1989 while Tedla, 74, served as chief of general staff from 1989 until 1991 when rebel forces of the now-defunct Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front took Addis Abeba and ousted the Mengistu regime.
The pair were convicted of genocide in absentia in 2006 and sentenced to death for their role in mass killings of Mengistu’s opponents.
Ethopia's Federal Court said on Thursday that Bayeh and Tedla were pardoned and free to leave the Italian embassy, according to the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency.
