Denver trial for Ethiopian suspected of torture, mass murder begins

October 07, 2013 | Denver Post | By Tom McGhee*

Kefelegn Alemu Worku (Provided by
federal authorities )

The man known in federal court as John Doe entered this country posing as the father of another refugee who feared his own father's health would prevent his family from getting into the United States, according to a court document.

Doe has admitted his real name is Kefelegn Alemu Worku. Prosecutors say he participated in government-sponsored torture and murder in Ethiopia.

He goes to trial in U.S. District Court in Denver on Monday for allegations of immigration violations that could net him up to 22 years in an American prison followed by deportation, according to a source familiar with the case.

Prosecutors are expected to present testimony at the trial about his alleged brutality as a prison guard during the late 1970s, a period known as Ethiopia's "Red Terror."

Among the false statements he is accused of making in applying for naturalization is the answer "no" he gave to this question: "Have you ever persecuted (either directly or indirectly) any person because of race, religion, national origin ... or political opinion," according to his indictment.

The court document, an application for a search warrant, says that the siblings of a man identified as S.B., recruited someone he knew only as "Tufa" to masquerade as their father, Habteab Berhe Temanu.

S.B., who immigrated to the United States in 1995, sponsored "Tufa," really Alemu Worku, and four siblings during the refugee application process that led to their immigration in 2004.

S.B. "explained that at the time ... his real father's health and mental state were deteriorating to the extent that the family did not feel he could successfully complete the required refugee interviews," according to the document.

During the application process, Alemu Worku masqueraded as Temanu, claiming he and S.B.'s siblings fled to Nairobi, Kenya in 2000, as war raged between Ethiopia and Eritrea. "He claimed he had been arrested in Nazareth, Ethiopia because of his Eritrean ethnicity and that the government of Ethiopia accused him of helping the Eritrean government," according to the document.

Alemu Worku admitted to entering the country illegally in a letter to Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane. "I lied to U.S. gov't officials and I accepted documents that were not rightfully mine. This was wrong and I apologize for my errors I simply wanted to live in America."

He wrote that he suffered for 13 years as a refugee in Kenya before coming to the United States.

But his letter does not admit involvement in the terror, a two-year blood bath, during which he was allegedly a guard at "Higher 15," where about 1,500 political prisoners were housed, and often tortured and killed.

Kiflu Ketema, 58, who spent 18 months at the prison, reported Alemu Worku was living in the U.S. to federal authorities in 2012 after his brother told him he had seen the parking attendant at the Cozy Cafe, an Aurora restaurant.

When Ketema arrived at the cafe, he spotted Alemu Worku, believed to be in his late 60s, outside smoking a cigarette, he said. His appearance, even his voice had changed little.

When Ketema confronted him, the smoker denied being Alemu Worku. "He said, "No, maybe it could have been my brother," Ketema remembered.

Ketema said of his time at the prison in Addis Ababa, "I got lucky, I wasn't tortured." But he witnessed many others, most of them young people, being brutalized, and heard screams and gunshots echoing through the tightly packed jail.

Many of those who Alemu Worku escorted from the cells never came back. Ketema believes they were killed, their bodies, like those of many executed at the prison, dumped in the street. "I didn't see him pull the trigger, but I saw him take them away."

Abraham Zeweldi, who spent six weeks at a different Ethiopian prison during the same period, was burned with cigarettes and beaten so hard that his left ear drum ruptured. "They use us like ashtray. They did that to me, but not as bad as others," Zeweldi said.

In a court document, prosecutors have said that in November, 2000, the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Republic Federal High Court convicted Alemu Worku of genocide in absentia.

In 2001, a British Broadcasting Corporation report, citing Ethiopian media, said a former guard at the prison named Kefelegn Alemu was convicted, in absentia, of participating in the execution of 101 people. He was ordered hanged should he ever be found.

Ketema said he doubts that the Ethiopian government now in power would execute Alemu Worku if he is deported. "They will give him five or six years, then let him go."

Others involved in the Red Terror were sentenced to death, and though imprisoned, weren't executed. " They are free now," Ketema said.


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*Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dpmcghee