Full Translation of Zone9ers Charge Sheet

Disclaimer

Prosecutors need to have a good understanding of the meaning and use of language of the crime they try to describe in the charge sheet. I believe linguistic precision is of a paramount importance for people whose career putting down blame on people even though they have evidence to support their allegation. This is basic for people who claimed to have a legal obligation and a moral ground for keeping the country out of trouble as Hailemariam Desalegn repeatedly said to his interviewers. But do they have what they claim? Let’s see how an incompetent government writes a criminal charge sheet and hand dawn judgment on innocent people.

Much has been said, about the bogus nature of the terrorism charges. I believe people who follow this case know the charge sheet do not even have the least amount of truth in it but the way it is written and its presentation tells its spurious nature much better than a good blog post. So I decided to translate the 19 pages charge sheet as it is written in Amharic.

Anyone who has read the Amharic charge sheet must be aware that the poorly written charge sheet of the bloggers presents an illustration of how dreadful Ethiopia’s Justice System is. There are various instances of conflicting accounts of the crimes on the made-up charges, citation mishmash, absence of dates and mixing up European and Ethiopian calendar and instance of getting a name wrong. For example, the name of Edom & Tesfalem, two of the accused is not mentioned even not for a single time but they were made to sign 23 pages of confession papers between them.

Read the entire charge sheet in English below.