Tigray Police Confirm to BBC the Killing of Mewael Gebreegziabher, Son of Brigadier General Gebreegziabher Beyene
Mewael Gebreegziabher’s funeral was to be held in Mekelle, the regional capital. A street in Mekelle, July 2013 (file photo). Photo: MarcD./Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Tigray’s police commission has confirmed to BBC Tigrinya that Mewael Gebreegziabher, the 23-year-old son of Brigadier General Gebreegziabher Beyene, known as Wedi Antru, was killed.
Colonel Nigus Woldegebriel, deputy commissioner of the Tigray Police Commission, told BBC Tigrinya that the police had confirmed the killing and sent a team to investigate, but he did not say whether Mewael was shot or killed some other way, or exactly where it happened. The police confirmation came as different and conflicting accounts of how the young man died were going around.
Tigray Media Corporation, which runs Tigrai Television, wrote on its Facebook page that Mewael was killed on Friday, Nov. 13, by gunmen of the TPLF, which it called a “terror group,” and said those gunmen had been carrying out assassinations, kidnappings and killings of peaceful Tigrayans. It said his funeral would be held at the Enda Mariam church in Adi Shumdhun, in Mekelle’s Hawelti sub-city. The TPLF has not given any official response to that charge, the BBC said.
The Tigray Peace Force, the armed group that fights alongside federal troops in Tigray, gave a different account in a statement of condolence, saying that Mewael, one of its members, died on Nov. 13 in what it called “a sudden accident.” According to the life story the group published, he was born in Mekelle on July 10, 2003, to Gebreegziabher Beyene and Tinsue Woldegiorgis, and went to school in Mekelle and Addis Ababa. When war broke out in Tigray in November 2020, he joined the armed struggle “to defend his people” and fought until the Pretoria agreement. He later joined the Tigray Peace Force after opposing a decision by senior commanders of the Tigray army.
In the days before news of his death, posts on social media and some websites had accused Mewael of crimes, with some writers saying he was involved in “dangerous activities” inside Tigray and in a killing and was in hiding, and calling on the police to arrest him. The BBC said none of those accusations had been officially confirmed by the police or any other legal body.
His father, Brigadier General Gebreegziabher, is a former member and commander of the TPLF who broke away from it and went on to lead the armed group known as Hara Meret. Its fighters joined the Ethiopian army in taking control of Mekelle during the war that broke out again this year between federal forces and the TPLF. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed later named him to head security under the caretaker administration that the federal government in Addis Ababa set up in Tigray. The BBC said the killing reflects the uncertain security situation in Mekelle and across Tigray, and the tension among the armed and political groups there.
Zegabi emailed requests for comment at about 10:25 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 14 to Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, the African Union, IGAD, OHCHR, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and had not received replies by the time of this update.
Sources