Ethiopian evangelicals fully exonerated

MAYCHEW, Ethiopia — Two evangelical church elders jailed for 10 months as murder suspects in northern Ethiopia have been fully exonerated by the judge’s written court ruling.

Judge Abraha Mengistu of the Bureau of Justice stated that the police investigations mounted against Kiros Meles and Abebayeh Desalegn did not constitute a “real case.”

“This is a false accusation,” the judge noted in the March 5 ruling, and ordered the immediate release of the two schoolteachers, both active in Pentecostal churches in Maychew.

Now that the court exonerated Meles and Desalegn, the authorities must bring to trial the local policeman, Johannes Kiros.

Kiros is believed to have fired the fatal shot that killed a young Orthodox boy April 14 last year, during two days of violent rioting led by Orthodox church extremists in Maychew against the town’s five evangelical churches. The schools where Meles and Desalegn were employed reinstated them in their teaching positions.