NAME OF MECHANISM

Special Prosecutor’s Office

PERIOD OF OPERATION

8 August 1992 – present. Reports suggested that the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) would finish its work by 1998, but the office has yet to indicate formal closure. The SPO mandate stipulates that “the term of the office shall terminate upon accomplishment of its task.”

MANDATE AND OPERATIONS

Mandate: Authorised on 8 August 1992 by Proclamation No. 22/1992  “to establish for public knowledge and for posterity a historical record of the abuses of the Mengistu regime and to bring those criminally responsible for human rights violations and/or corruption to justice.” The SPO is accountable to the prime minister.

In 1995, a Public Defender’s Office was established to guarantee that defendants receive fair trials that meet international standards.

Staff: A chief of special public prosecutors, deputy and assistant chiefs of the special public prosecutors, other special public prosecutors and the necessary staff. The total number of staff is unknown.

RESOURCES

Ethiopia: Report of the Office of the Special Prosecutor  [USIP | Feb 1994]
Proclamation Establishing the Office of the Special Prosecutor [Tronvoll, Schaefer and Alemu Aneme | 1992]

RESULTS

As of February 2007, the SPO had prosecuted 5,119 people, with a total of 3,583 convictions. Opposition groups have alleged that some of the SPO's detainees have been held for political reasons. The SPO has admitted that about 656 innocent people were imprisoned as a result of flawed prosecutions [ECADF Ethiopian News  | Feb 2010].

The SPO has been criticised by some civil society groups for not being part of a broader justice agenda, in particular for not allowing for a greater engagement with truth recovery and truth telling. Furthermore, the legitimacy of the SPO has been questioned in light of the alleged human rights abuses taking place under the current government, led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front.

BACKGROUND

The Woyane government created the SPO in 1992, a year after coming to power, to charge former officials of the Derg for human rights abuses committed between 1974 and 1991.

In October 1994, the SPO filed its first formal charges against a number of former Derg officials and began criminal proceedings. The SPO has been criticised by the international community for its slow progress and the length of time detainees await trial [US State Dept  | Feb 2000].

With the adoption of a new Ethiopian constitution in 1995, the SPO established a Public Defender's Office to guarantee that defendants receive a fair trial in line with the constitutional guarantee of equal rights to all citizens [USIP  | Aug 2008].

The SPO’s best-known case is that brought against the former head of state, Mengistu Haile Mariam, which began on 13 December 1994. Mengistu was tried in absentia and found guilty of genocide on 12 December 2006. On 11 January 2007, Mengistu was sentenced to life in prison, but the sentence is unlikely to be carried out as Mengistu remains in Zimbabwe, where he has lived in exile since being deposed [Trial Watch | Aug 2008].

SOURCES

[BBC | Dec 1999]
[ECADF Ethiopian News | Feb 2010]
[Trial Watch | Aug 2008]
[Kjetil Tronvoll, Charles Schaefer and Girmachew Alemu Aneme, eds., The Ethiopian Red Terror Trials (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2009)]
[University of Minnesota]
[US State Dept | Feb 2000]
[USIP | Aug 2008]