Cleric blasts Mugabe for shielding Mengistu
Agence France-Presse (France)
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Johannesburg - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday drew trenchant criticism from an arch-foe for shielding former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam who has been found guilty of genocide.
"Mugabe is using the taxpayers' money to keep a dictator who killed a million people," Pius Ncube, archbishop of Zimbabwe's second city Bulawayo, told a news conference.
"Mengistu allowed one million people to die by refusing to let western humanitarian workers to come in and help fight starvation. He did it to save the government's face," Ncube said.
"You can see what kind of friends (Mugabe) keeps," he said, adding: "You need one dictator to prop up another."
Zimbabwe has ruled out extraditing Mengistu, who on Tuesday was found guilty by an Ethiopian court of genocide for atrocities committed under his Marxist regime following a 12-year trial.
Mengistu, who was ousted in 1991 and took exile in Zimbabwe, faces the death penalty.
The charges against Mengistu and his co-accused relate to atrocities committed during the 1977-78 "Red Terror" period when tens of thousands of people were killed or disappeared in his bid to turn Ethiopia into a Soviet-style workers' state.
He and his former top aides were also accused of the murders of Ethiopia's emperor Haile Selassie, who claimed descent from the Queen of Sheba. The emperor was toppled in a 1974 coup.
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