Ethiopia plans monument for Mengistu terror victims

Mon Apr 24, 2006 2:24 PM GMT

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia said on Monday it would build a monument to honour thousands of people killed during the 1977-78 "Red Terror" purge by Marxist Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

"The Mausoleum will shelter 27 caskets bearing remains of 55,000 Red Terror victims, exhumed from different mass graves in and around Addis Ababa city," an official said.

A committee entrusted with the construction of the $1 million mausoleum to be located at the Maskel Square next to the Addis Ababa Museum, said it would also incorporate a library and a meeting hall.

A verdict in a genocide trial against Mengistu is due on May 23 after 14 years of proceedings.

The former dictator, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991 after guerrilla forces led by now Prime Minister Meles Zenawi ousted his 17-year-old Marxist regime, is being tried in absentia.

Mengistu and other members of a notoriously brutal military junta are accused of killing more than 1,000 people in the so- called "Red Terror" purges, including former Emperor Haile Selassie whom he dethroned in 1974.