Who Killed Ethiopia’s Respected Former Foreign Minister?

Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s longest-serving foreign minister (1991-2010) and a veteran Tigrayan activist, “exemplified the country’s tradition of enlightened and progressive patriotism,” says Alex de Waal, an academic expert on the Horn of Africa and a former adviser on Sudan to the African Union. But on January 13, the Ethiopian News Agency announced that he was one of three Tigrayan “junta senior leaders” who had been killed “in a shoot-out”. De Waal writes that the killings, as part of “a pattern of systematic targeting of Tigrayans” consistent with the politics of genocide, warrant an immediate high-level international investigation.