Genocide verdict for Ethiopia's Mengistu due in May

ADDIS ABABA, Mar 15 (Reuters) A verdict in the genocide trial against Ethiopia's exiled former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam is due on May 23 after 14 years of proceedings, a court said today.

Mengistu -- 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.

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

Ethiopia's High Court said it would also rule on the same day on genocide charges against various of Mengistu's followers, believed to number about 100.

The co-accused include former prime minister Fikre Selassie Wogderesse, former vice president Fissiha Desta and about 40 other top officials from the Mengistu era who have been in prison awaiting a verdict since 1992.

The others are also in exile and being tried in absentia.

''The indictment process (against) Lt Colonel Mengistu Haile Marium on genocide charges has come to an end,'' the state-run Ethiopian News Agency quoted the court as saying.

''The court will give its final verdict against all those accused on May 23, 2006.'' The iron-fisted leftist dictator escaped Ethiopia after he and two former military officials were given sanctuary in the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa.

Under Ethiopian law, genocide is defined as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups.

Human rights groups have criticised the length of the trial, but the prosecution argues that the complex nature of the evidence is what has delayed the verdicts.

REUTERS SHR RN2044