Tigray Central Command Accuses John Medid of Betraying Tigray and Joining “the Enemy”

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The Tigray Central Command, the military leadership of the forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, has accused Maj. Gen. Yohannes Woldegiorgis, the senior commander widely known as John Medid, of betraying the people of Tigray and its fallen fighters by secretly linking up with the enemy, a day after the Tigray Peace Force said he had surrendered to federal troops in Central Tigray.

The quarrel over the general comes as the Ethiopian Government fights on two fronts in the north. In the Amhara region, the Amhara Fano National Movement has widened its campaign to contest the main federal supply lines across northern Amhara, the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats project said on Tuesday, and fighting between federal forces and Fano has spread across South Gondar since Saturday, residents told DW, as Zegabi reported. In Tigray, an official of the Tigray Peace Force told DW on Tuesday that the joint campaign with the federal army had cleared villages from Mai Kinetal to Workamba in the Central Zone and that Brig. Gen. Abraha Tesfay, known as Dinkul, the commander of the Tigray forces’ Army 42, and other senior commanders were now surrounded. DW said it could not verify the claim.

In the statement, dated Tuesday and headed “The just struggle of the people of Tigray will not be extinguished by treason and betrayal,” the command said the general had been sent by the Tigray government to lead several armies against what it called the invasion launched on Sept. 23, and that after problems appeared, “a special decision was made” to protect the resistance from harm. It said it had since made adjustments and opened a review of its military and political leadership at every level, and that Yohannes, who had separated himself from the army’s units and from the central command and stayed on his own, was called to a meeting held as part of that review. He did not want to come because he understood what the review “could bring,” the statement said. Instead, it said, he formed ties with the enemy, and while the commanders and staff around him who did not know of the plan fought their way out, he and a few others joined “the enemies he had called in advance.” The command said it would give more details later, and it ended by saying that the struggle of the people of Tigray “is not something to be extinguished by individuals or worn down by bandas,” a word for collaborators. DW Amharic’s Yohannes G/Egziabher reported the statement on Wednesday, and its text was posted in Tigrigna on X by @tesfanews. The statement did not say where or when he left, and it offered no evidence for its accusations, which could not be independently verified.

Its account differs from what officials of the Tigray Peace Force, the armed group allied with the federal government, have said. The force’s commander, Brig. Gen. Gebregziabher Beyene, told BBC Tigrinya that Yohannes gave himself up to the Ethiopian National Defense Force and the Tigray Peace Force after he was surrounded in Simret (also written Semret), in Rama woreda, and that there had been fighting before he surrendered, as Zegabi reported on Tuesday. A senior source in the Tigray forces told BBC Tigrinya that the general had been moved from the southern front and ordered to report to the central command, that he stayed instead with his guards near Adet, the village where he grew up, and that he was taken “without fighting” after refusing to use a road that fighters of the Tigray forces’ Army 60 had cleared for him. That source said he “may have had negotiations in advance” and gave himself up once shooting started, a claim the BBC said it could not verify with the general or anyone independent. Neither the federal government in Addis Ababa nor the general has spoken publicly about how he came into federal hands.

On X, people argued over what the statement meant. Getachew Temare (@getachew_temare), who describes himself as a lawyer and human rights defender, wrote in English that “a general once entrusted with commanding its forces is suddenly portrayed as a traitor” and called it a sign of the “political and moral bankruptcy” of what he called the TPLF’s fugitive leadership. Hours before the statement came out, adu Man (@TadMan61457017) had posted in Amharic that the general’s close relatives called the reports of his capture “completely false and fabricated propaganda,” a claim the account did not source and that the command’s own statement did not support.

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