“He had a machine gun and brought it down on my head, and he shouted, ‘Tell the truth,’ ” Ethiopian witness said at Denver courtroom

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Two witnesses described savage beatings they received at an Ethiopian prison more than 30 years ago and told jurors that the gray-haired defendant charged with immigration fraud was among those who tortured them.

Berhan Dargie, 62, was a law student in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1977 when he was arrested by a group of armed men and taken to “Higher 15,” a prison operated by the Marxist military dictatorship.

The beating, at first with fists and feet, started when he arrived and didn’t end for almost 12 hours. By then, his hands were swollen to the size of boxing gloves; his feet, back and face were torn and bloody; and toenails had been torn out, he said.

About three hours into the beating, the man he identified as Kefelgn Alemu Worku entered. “He had a machine gun and brought it down on my head, and he shouted, ‘Tell the truth,’ ” Dargie said in a Denver courtroom.

Dargie said he was stripped to his underwear, his wrists and ankles tied together, his chest bearing the weight of his body.

Alemu Worku ordered one of the guards to bring a bottle of water and “a special instrument,” then poured the water on Dargie’s feet and began to beat the soles. “You feel it not only in your feet but all over your body. It was so unbearable,” Dargie said.

When the abuse was finished for the night, other prisoners carried him to a tiny cell crowded with about 10 others. “The prisoners opened up space for me at last, so I could stretch my legs and lie down.”

Nesibu Sibhat, now 49, was only 14 — and a member of a youth group affiliated with the opposition party — when he was taken to the same prison.

He recounted how two men tied his hands to his feet and delivered a similar beating for six hours as his sister watched in horror. One of the men, he said, was Kefelgn Alemu Worku. The trial continues on Thursday.

Witnesses identify man in court as one who beat them in Ethiopian jail

By Tom McGhee
The Denver Post