👹 The Black Kaaba stone of Mecca shows a demon/ evil spirit object holding a box from the altar – the box appears to have a triangle and the symbol of Allah/ Lucifer on it.
🦗 Extreme Insect Infestation Can be a Sign of Demonic Infestation
And the Cricket infestation occurred during Passover/ Fasika, which tells the story of the 10 plagues and the opening of the Red Sea.
While it may be true that there was an unprecedented rainfall that drove in these crickets, what’s interesting is when you look back at the original 10 plagues in Mitsrayim (Egypt), in the surrounding nations, they had all sorts of unprecedented things too like excessive rain fall, major dust storms and even earthquakes.
On 11 September 2015 (9/11 – Ethiopian New Year’s Day) a crawler crane collapsed over the Main Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, killing 111 people and injuring 394 others.
Well, while this one is not the book of Revelation prophecy, which is where the locusts have the heads of men and the hair of women, this is more like a warning.
Could the crickets be an indication that The Most High will no longer (shema like in Ishmael) hear them, that He has given them plenty of time to shema (hear) Him and because they want to continue in their repetition (equated to that of noise/a clanging gong) that the crickets are a physical representation, being they are in Mecca and covering the area where the prayer rugs are located…. This is more of like a warning.
❖❖❖[Matthew 7:13-14]❖❖❖
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
❖❖❖[Matthew 22:14]❖❖❖
“For many are called, but few are chosen.”
🐷 Pro-Abortion Activists Take Bible And Play Soccer With It. They Then Put The Bible in a Toilet
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 9, 2022
💭 On Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022 / Pagumen 3, 2014, according to the Ethiopian calendar) Orthodox and Catholic Ethiopian Christians celebrated Feast of the Archangel Raphael.
❖ Sunday, 11 September is New Year’s Day which marks Meskerem or September 1st, 2015 — the first day within the Ethiopian calendar.
💭 Ethiopian Christians call the Rainbow as “The Belt of Mary”
The three distinguished colors Green yellow and red are vested with Religious interpretation in the Ethiopian Church. These three colors represent the Covenant given to Noah by the Almighty God. They are extracted from the Rainbow sign given to our forefather Noah. It is not deniable that these three colors are the dominant colors that one can easily catches by naked eye when we look at the Rainbow on the clouds. Hence as the matter of representing the Noah’s Covenant, Ethiopia keeps these three together as prominent sign, since the time before the Old Testament. With these colors we remember the Covenant our father Noah received from God. That is why one meticulously finds these three colors in most of the frames (Hareg – ሐረግ) of the parchments.
That Rainbow is the similitude of our Lady Holy Virgin Mary. When we see the Rainbow on the sky, we remember the Covenant that God promised not destroy the world in water. Now in the New Testament we have received the actual Covenant that we are sure the promise of redemption has been fulfilled by Her Son. Less destruction we are saved from everlasting death. The New Testament as the new Covenant come to us by the New Rainbow, Holy Virgin Mary. When we see her in the middest of us we know God is with us. Looking at the Green-Yellow-Red flag is looking to Holy Virgin Mary.
Besides, these colors were the ones revealed to the Ethiopian Scholar Saint Yared in Axum, when he received the three special melodies, Geez, Ezil, Araray from God. He was communicated with three birds each colored different, The first in Green, the second in Yellow and the third in Red. These colors represent Holy Trinity. The Three Person of the One God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were revealed to St Yared, one of the biggest holy scholars of the Ethiopian Church. The mystery of Holy Trinity is the primary Dogma of The Ethiopian Church. For an Ethiopian Orthodox these colors manifest Holy Trinity. This is an affirmative act by God’s hand that these colors are given to the Church. Both in the times before Christianity and after Christianity Ethiopian Church is vested with these special Colors.
Dictating the Church and it’s followers not to hold, to put the sign on their clothing, and to tie on hands and heads is equivalent to denying the freedom to worship. That is why we do not accept any intervening force that hails against us not to hold the Flag. We hold the flag not from political motives, but because it is a religious deed. The flag was in the Church in its fullest dignity before the birth of the political parties.
😲 Some mind-blowing coincidences related to the death of the Queen (R.I.P) who had Ethiopian ancestry:
Just 2 days before Queen Elizabeth II died she accepted the resignation of Boris (Real first name Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson)) and accepted Liz Truss (First names Mary Elizabeth) as former/new PM.
👉 Queen Elizabeth II full name is: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.
😇 The Feast of the Archangel Raphael
One of the most important miracles of Saint Raphael is commemorated on the third day of Pagumen (Ethiopians follow a 13-month calendar – and the 13th month is called Pagumen).
One of the most important miracles of Saint Raphael is commemorated on the third day of Pagumen. The miracle is related to a Church dedicated to the archangel and is said to have been constructed on an island outside the city of Alexandria in Egypt. It is said that the church was threatened to be demolished by a whale and started shaking whilst the believers were praying inside the church. It was later saved miraculously by the Archangel Raphael.
The story described in the Book of Tobit, an Old Testament scripture, states that Saint Raphael was revealed to a man named Tobia who had a blind father called Tobit. The archangel instructed Tobia to fish in the River of Tigris and the heart and liver of a fish is said to have been served to Tobit, and that cured his eyes. According to the same story, a woman named Sarah (not the wife of Abraham) was married to seven husbands one after another, but all died on the first night of the marriage.
Saint Raphael intervened and told Tobia to marry Sarah. He miraculously exorcised the evil spirit and Tobia was spared the fate of Sarah’s previous husbands. St. Raphael is also believed to have been empowered by God to intervene for fruitful marriage, fertility and to reduce the labor during childbirth. He is also said to have performed a number of miracles on this day (Pagumen). That’s why the day is celebrated with special vivacity in the churches dedicated to the Archangel.
Pagumen is also called Rehiwe Semay literally meaning ‘The opening of heaven’. It is believed that on this day the prayers of believers reach before God in a special manner, and hence the term Rehiwe Semay. The rain that falls on this day is also considered Holy; it is believed that it blesses Christians and protects them from infirmity and bad fortune. On this day, we see children rinsing in the rain to receive blessing. Women add drops of the sacred rainwater to their dough to have their Injera and bread blessed.
😇 May Archangel Raphael’s Intercession be with us, Amen!
💭 Biblical swarms of giant Crickets are turning US farms to dust
Northern Oregon rangeland, Jordan Maley and April Aamodt are on the lookout for Mormon crickets, giant insects that can ravage crops.
“There’s one right there,” Aamodt says.
They’re not hard to spot. The insects, which can grow larger than 2 inches (5 centimeters), blot the asphalt.
Mormon crickets are not new to Oregon. Native to western North America, their name dates back to the 1800s, when they ruined the fields of Mormon settlers in Utah. But amidst drought and warming temperatures — conditions favored by the insects — outbreaks across the West have worsened.
Can they be a secret tool in the battle against climate change?
ETHIOPIA IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST CENTERS of major and minor crop diversity. Ethiopian farmers have grown wheat, barley, sorghum, and peas for millennia, passing seeds from one generation to the next through an informal community-based seed sharing network.
Despite this tradition of agricultural biodiversity, Ethiopia is also an arid region, one vulnerable to climate change and drought. At a time of increasing globalization, Ethiopian farmers in recent generations have discarded seeds from hundreds of traditional grains in favor of a select few non-native industrial hybrids, but after many of these modern crops failed—partially due to climate change—farmers are shifting away from “modern” crops to safeguard the future and livelihood of Ethiopian rural communities.
Beginning in 2014, an ambitious project called Seeds for Needs, created with joint support from Ethiopian farmers and researchers at Bioversity International, Mekelle University, and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, began researching Ethiopia’s past to reawaken ancient grains that might provide solutions to the country’s extreme vulnerability to drought and other environmental conditions.
TIGRAY IS ONE OF NINE REGIONAL STATES of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, a country with over 100 million people. It is a small region, with only 5.5 million people, most of whom belong to the Tigrinya ethnic group, a vital cultural and political fixture in the country’s social landscape. While the Ethiopian population is growing rapidly—the average woman has four children in her lifetime (World Bank)— its food systems cannot keep up with growing demand. Consequently, undernutrition contributes to a child mortality rate of 28%, with stunting affecting 38% of children under the age of five (UNICEF).
Improving nutrition is made increasingly difficult by climate change, which now impacts healthcare, the environment, and the productivity of many crops and livestock. Thanks to its rich heritage of agricultural biodiversity, Ethiopia has the capacity to address undernutrition by enhancing agrobiodiversity, which spreads agricultural “risk” by growing a range of crops to meet the challenges of uncertain times. Unfortunately, most agronomic research is generally overlooked, while policymakers incorrectly assume that indigenous crops developed by hundreds of generations of farmers are less productive and unable to contribute significantly to food security. Policymakers have recently encouraged farmers to grow a small collection of modern grains to please food processors and international markets. This approach, which rarely includes traditional varieties, now threatens the country’s agricultural biodiversity and with it the survival of the country’s food production system.
One solution may come from the country’s near past. The Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, the largest and oldest Seed Bank in Africa, holds 6,000 accessions (different varieties) of teff, 7,000 accessions of durum wheat, and 12,000 accessions of barley. Can the bio-regional genetics of these seeds provide clues that may aid in the struggle against climate change? The international coalition behind Seeds for Needs thinks so. Led by Bioversity International, Scuola S. Anna in Pisa, Mekelle University, Amhara Region Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI), and the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute (EBI), this project has adopted a holistic, participatory action-driven approach to researching whether traditional varieties can help solve today’s agricultural challenges. The program, which has grown to include GIZ, the World Bank, the Integrated Seed System Development (a Dutch initiative), and the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture, uses extremely simple yet effective logic: if 4000 ancient grain varieties kept in the National Gene Bank’s seed vaults survived and adapted for millennia on farmers’ fields, they may provide benefits if returned to the very farmers who first developed and saved them. In Tigrinya, the farmers have a name for the initiative: Wehabit … or “We got it back”.
💭 Exotic, Gluten-Free Grain Grows in Popularity — Enough to Cause a Dust-Up in Eastern Oregon
A little-known grain from the Horn of Africa — billed as the next wave in America’s quest for healthy foods — is proving that competition for a hot commodity can get downright nasty.
Only a few thousand acres of Oregon farmland are believed devoted to the production of teff. But people suffering from gluten intolerance together with immigrants hungry for traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean ethnic dishes are driving up the domestic demand for the iron-rich grain.
All of which appears to have played into an angry clash between rival teff traders in the out-of-the-way Starlite Cafe last year in Vale.
Tiny grain
In Ethiopia:
Sometimes known as “love-grass,” teff was domesticated in Ethiopia in ancient times and is commonly grown the country’s highlands. While it’s the preferred grain of the Ethiopian people, it also is the country’s most expensive grain. It covers the greatest area of farmland of any Ethiopian crop, but has low per-acre yields and requires labor-intensive harvesting and processing techniques.
In U.S.:
How much teff is grown here is difficult to determine. OSU Extension agent Rich Roseberg calls it a “specialty crop.” “It’s a very attractive plant,” he says. “There are some types that have a purplish seed head and leaf that we are looking at as potentially ornamental.”
Nutrition:
Teff is 11 percent protein, 80 percent complex carbohydrates and 3 percent fat, according to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. It’s an excellent source of essential amino acids, particularly lysine, often deficient in grain foods. It’s gluten-free, making it an alternative to wheat, rye and barley.
Wayne Carlson of Caldwell Idaho, founder of The Teff Co., has pleaded guilty in Malheur County Circuit Court to a misdemeanor harassment charge in the incident with Tesfa Drar, who was born in Ethiopia and now lives in Minneapolis.
“This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” said Drar, a U.S. resident since 1981. “I was shocked.”
Court records say Carlson sat down beside Drar, who was meeting with a prospective teff grower in the cafe, and accused him of cheating growers and smuggling seed into the U.S. from Ethiopia. The two had never before met face-to-face, and Carlson allegedly used a racial epithet and told Drar to go back to his own country.
Carlson was sentenced in April to 12 months of probation, community service and ordered to write an apology to Drar.
The confrontation raised a lot of eyebrows. Teff production is a mere blip on the annual U.S. Department of Agriculture’s major agricultural crop charts. It stands in obscurity alongside organically grown Kamut, an ancient khorasan wheat from Egypt, and quinoa from the Andes of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, in the ranks of exotic grains newly popular among health food consumers.
Drar said he thinks Carlson is afraid he’s going to take over the international teff business. “I have better access to the consumers who buy it,” he said.
Carlson and his attorney, Mike Mahoney of Vale, didn’t return phone calls for comment.
Teff is increasingly embraced as a high-quality horse hay and grown in at least 25 states, according to the University of Nevada Extension Service. Nevada is emerging as a big teff state, with 15 variations grown in Churchill County alone, mostly for cattle and horse forage.
Farmers in Oregon cultivate about 3,000 acres of teff for hay, said Rich Roseberg, an
Oregon State University Extension agentin Klamath Falls. They grow another 1,000 acres for food grain, he estimated.
Nationally, fewer than 10,000 acres are believed dedicated to food grain production of teff for milling into flour.
That’s in stark contrast to 53 million acres of wheat, 73 million acres of corn and 73 million acres of soybeans harvested annually in the United States.
Consumers, however, are catching the buzz that teff is nutritious, gluten-free and can be baked into breads, cookies, pizza crusts and other pastries. It’s widely used in East Africa for a flatbread called injera, for a porridge similar to cream of wheat and as a fermented alcoholic beverage.
Neil Koberstein, purchasing manager at Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods of Milwaukie, buys about 18,000 pounds of teff every 45 days to be stone ground into flour and sold, he said. That’s up from 7,500 pounds a decade ago.
“We’ve had remarkable growth in the last 10 years,” Koberstein said.
Teff seeds are so tiny, about 1.25 million to the pound, that “if you were to puncture a bag, it pours out like water,” Koberstein said. It takes about 150 teff seeds to equal a single grain of wheat.
For some people, flat breads and other pastries made from teff flour are an acquired taste, he noted. Taste descriptions range from sour to bland to delicious.
“Injera is sort of like a sourdough pancake,” said Brian Charlton, an OSU Extension agronomist in Klamath Falls who enjoys Ethiopian cuisine. “I liked it right away. I wish somebody would open a restaurant in Klamath Falls. I’d eat there all the time.”
Drar is adamant: Teff is the food of the future, and he wants everybody to eat it. His enthusiasm for the offbeat grain borders on the mystical and mythic:
“Ethiopians are always No. 1 as marathoners. Why do you think?” he asked, having dinner recently in the Hamley Steakhouse in Pendleton, where teff is definitely not on the menu. “It’s teff! They eat it three times a day!”
The word teff in the ancient Ethiopic language means “lost,” because the grains are prone to blowing away in the faintest breeze, he said. Three-thousand-year-old teff seeds have been found in Egyptian pyramids, he says.
Then, stealing a march on the biblical mustard seed, Drar added, “This is the smallest seed on Earth!”
Drar immigrated to America to study computer science and later to earn his living as a commodities trader. He was dismayed to find the injera that he was accustomed to having with his meals was absent from stores. He longed for it constantly.
Eventually, Drar flew to Ethiopia and brought 20 pounds of teff seed back to Minneapolis. He began cultivating a few acres, talked others into doing likewise and ultimately marketed his “Selam” brand of teff flour to ethnic grocery stores and restaurants.
These days, he travels the nation six months a year, using his van, smartphone and laptop as a mobile office. He takes orders for teff from ethnic stores and restaurants and works hard to convince farmers to partner with him in growing and marketing the grain.
Someday, he hopes to export American-grown teff to Ethiopia, which is too parched to grow enough for itself, he said.
“Teff is in my blood,” Drar said. “I don’t want to see people hungry.”
“We all heard witness accounts of underage girls and old women being raped and gang-raped by the joint forces. Priests and deacons were slaughtered by the soldiers,” the testimony says.
👉 Courtesy: The Guardian
Lawyers bringing first complaint to Africa’s top rights body over conflict in country say violations ‘could amount to war crimes’
Ethiopia has committed a wide range of human rights violations in its war against Tigrayan rebel forces, including mass killings, sexual violence and military targeting of civilians, according to a landmark legal complaint submitted to Africa’s top human rights body.
Lawyers acting for Tigrayan civilians said the complaint, filed on Monday, marked the first time that the African Union’s human rights commission had been asked to look into the conduct of Ethiopian troops in their war with the northern region’s rebel forces.
The alleged violations, “could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but further investigation would be required”, said Antonia Mulvey, executive director of the rights organisation Legal Action Worldwide (Law), which submitted the complaint with the US legal firm Debevoise & Plimpton and the Pan African Lawyers Union (Palu).
“The African Commission [on Human and Peoples’ Rights] has a unique opportunity to stand by victims and survivors from this conflict, to order emergency measures to stop unlawful killing of civilians trapped in Tigray and to hold Ethiopia to account,” added Mulvey.
Reporting to the 55-member African Union, the commission’s role is to investigate alleged human rights violations and make recommendations to heads of state and government. It can also make referrals to the African court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the union’s judicial arm.
The Law-Palu complaint alleges that since the conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) erupted in November 2020, federal forces in Ethiopia have committed widespread violations, including the military targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; mass and extrajudicial killings; gender-based sexual violence; arbitrary arrest and detention; mass displacement of civilians; destruction of property, food, and religious sites and cultural heritage; ethnic discrimination; and enforced information blackouts.
In a statement, lawyers said the allegations were based on the testimony of Tigrayan victims who could not be listed as complainants due to fear of reprisals from the government in Addis Ababa.
One written testimony, seen by the Guardian, contains allegations that Ethiopian and Eritrean forces carried out killings and rapes in the Shire region of Tigray in November 2020.
“We all heard witness accounts of underage girls and old women being raped and gang-raped by the joint forces. Priests and deacons were slaughtered by the soldiers,” the testimony says.
“The Ethiopian government has called the military operation in Tigray a ‘law-enforcement operation’,” the testimony continues. “But what we saw in Shire … was quite different. We saw with our own eyes that the military campaign was not only about eliminating the TPLF, but also about destroying the people and development of Tigray.”
A joint investigation released in November by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the UN found there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that all parties to the conflict in Tigray had, to varying degrees, committed human rights violations. Some of those breaches, it added, might amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On Monday, Law said that, while reports suggested that abuses had been committed by different parties, Tigrayan civilians constituted “the overwhelming majority of victims”.
Mulvey, a British solicitor who served on the UN’s fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said Law was keen to work alongside the commission’s existing inquiry into Tigray “to put an end to the impunity that has allowed these crimes to continue”.
Donald Deya, chief executive officer of Palu, said: “The government of Ethiopia is obliged by both its constitution and international law to protect all its citizens and residents from mass atrocities and violations of their human rights.
“Where it is unable or unwilling to uphold the same, as is the case here, we must seek recourse to competent international institutions. Hence, our urgent appeal to the African commission,” he said.
There was no immediate comment on the complaint from the Ethiopian government or the commission, which is based in the Gambia.
Ethiopia is not a state party to the founding statute of the international criminal court in The Hague, in effect making a trial there for alleged war crimes impossible without a referral from the UN security council. That possibility is considered highly unlikely due to objections from Russia and China, which can veto any such motion as permanent members of the council.
Yohannes and Gebremeskel knew it would be freezing cold inside the bulk cargo area of the Airbus A350 plane on the long flight from Ethiopia’s capital to Belgium.
But the two ground technicians with Ethiopian Airlines, both of Tigrayan origin, said they felt a threat from the Ethiopian authorities that left them no choice but to stow away among crates of fresh flowers.
Both men said family members had been detained under sweeping emergency laws that have targeted ethnic Tigrayans — and that they feared it was their turn next. The laws were imposed in November as Ethiopian government troops battle forces from the northern Tigray region in a bitter conflict that has now dragged on for 14 months. The government denies the laws targeted any particular group and recently lifted the state of emergency.
A view of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on November 27. Witnesses and Ethiopia's human rights commission accused authorities of arresting people in the capital based on ethnicity, using the wider powers granted by the state of emergency.
A view of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on November 27. Witnesses and Ethiopia’s human rights commission accused authorities of arresting people in the capital based on ethnicity, using the wider powers granted by the state of emergency.
So, in the early hours of December 4, Yohannes and Gebremeskel, both 25, made a spur of the moment decision to climb into the storage section of a converted Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane that was sitting in one of the hangars at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, waiting for the early morning flight to Brussels, Belgium.
As ground technicians with Ethiopia’s flagship commercial airline for the past five years, they had access to the compartment for routine inspection purposes. But if their hiding place was discovered, they would face harsh punishment, they said. CNN has changed both men’s names at their request for security reasons.
For more than three hours before take-off, they hid in the cold among the cabin crew’s luggage, not far away from the plane’s cargo shipment — crates loaded with roses ready to be delivered to Europe.
“We took the risk. We were — we had no choice, we had no choice, we couldn’t live in Addis Ababa, we were being treated as terrorists,” Yohannes, who has now obtained asylum in Belgium, told CNN in one of several phone conversations.
Four of his relatives have been killed, his fiancée is in prison in Ethiopia’s Afar region and his sister, about seven months pregnant, was seized from his house along with his furniture, he said. Yohannes believes these killings and detentions were motivated by their Tigrayan ethnicity and actioned under Ethiopia’s new emergency laws. “I don’t know where she [his fiancée] is currently,” he added. CNN has not been able to independently verify the deaths or imprisonment of Yohannes’ relatives.
“We took the risk. We were — we had no choice, we had no choice, we couldn’t live in Addis Ababa, we were being treated as terrorists.”
Yohannes
A spokeswoman for the office of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed noted in an emailed statement to CNN that the state of emergency was lifted on January 26, 2022.
“You would note that the Council of Ministers have today decided to lift the State of Emergency. Individuals apprehended under the SOE [State of Emergency] have been released in great numbers, over the past weeks by the security sector, following investigations,” spokeswoman Billene Seyoum Woldeyes said.
“The SOE was never enacted to ‘persecute’ any group of people based on their identity,” she said.
The pair are not the only airline employees to attempt a risky escape from their home country in recent weeks. On December 1, shortly before Yohannes and Gebremeskel fled to Belgium, two other Ethiopian Airlines technicians concealed themselves in a passenger aircraft destined for Washington, DC, a spokesperson for the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed to CNN via an emailed statement.
Yohannes and Gebremeskel decided to flee from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport after reports that security was more lax there following the suspension of dozens of Tigrayan guards.
Yohannes and Gebremeskel decided to flee from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport after reports that security was more lax there following the suspension of dozens of Tigrayan guards.
They had concealed themselves in the ceiling space above the seating, according to a source at Ethiopian Airlines with firsthand knowledge of the internal investigation that was launched afterward.
Their journey would last more than 36 hours in total, as the plane flew from Addis Ababa via Lagos, Nigeria, and Dublin, Ireland, before finally landing at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC.
Upon arrival in the US, the individuals were detained by the US Department of Homeland Security before later being transferred to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
CNN has also spoken to several other Tigrayan employees of Ethiopian Airlines who have fled Ethiopia in recent months through their jobs as flight crew. They told similar stories of widespread detentions of Tigrayans in Ethiopia and of targeted ethnic harassment from within the airline.
Concealed above plane crew’s bunk
CNN has been unable to speak directly to the stowaways who reached Washington, DC, but the source at Ethiopian Airlines said that both men were also of Tigrayan origin.
A CBP spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that after an identification and security examination, officers discovered the two “possessed Ethiopian Airlines employee identification cards, and that they stowed away with the intent of claiming asylum in the United States.”
“The two Ethiopian males are presently housed at a federal detention facility pending a hearing before an immigration judge,” the statement added. “CBP issued a civil penalty to Ethiopian Airlines for the security breach and were briefed on measures the airline is undertaking to enhance the airline’s aircraft security plan.”
CNN has obtained photos of the inside of the Boeing 777 aircraft as it looked during an inspection in the aftermath of the escape. In some pictures, it is possible to see the crew bunk in the center of the plane’s seating area, which the two men reportedly entered before lifting a mattress to reveal a maintenance access panel.
The images indicate they then cut a larger hole in the panel to enable them to smuggle themselves through the gap into the plane’s ceiling. They hid in this spot, not far above the aircraft’s toilets, for over a day and a half. CNN showed Boeing the photographs and a Boeing representative deferred to Ethiopian Airlines for comment.
The source at the airline told CNN they believed the fact that the stowaways were former maintenance technicians for the airline enabled them to know exactly where to hide inside the plane to go undetected without damaging the structure of the aircraft.
That they had the necessary tools with them to cut through the panelling might suggest the pair had planned the attempt in advance, the source at the airline added.
In total, 16 Ethiopian Airlines technicians appeared to have escaped via any possible means, either by boarding as cabin crew and walking off or stowing away, he said. CNN has been unable to independently verify this number.
For Yohannes and Gebremeskel, the decision to flee was an impromptu one, they said. They picked the first scheduled flight to a European country that was available and had to leave possessions including their cell phones behind in their lockers.
For the whole of their seven-hour flight to Brussels, they sat in the cargo area of the Airbus A350 with no food, no water, in the freezing cold, unbeknownst to the other members of the crew on board.
“I didn’t even have any clothes with me, I was wearing the uniform for maintenance […] I’m still wearing it,” Yohannes said.
“We don’t have anything to change into here, no underwear, no shoes, even the shoes […] we tried to cover our feet and the legs with what we had, it was night shift, on night shift we have the jacket of Ethiopian Airlines crew,” Gebremeskel, who also obtained asylum in Belgium, told CNN.
It was not how Gebremeskel imagined he would experience his first trip out of Ethiopia. Despite working for five years at Ethiopian Airlines, he had never boarded an international flight.
Airline employees claim discrimination against Tigrayans
Many people have left Ethiopia by land since the conflict began in November 2020. As of mid-December 2021, more than 50,000 people had fled into neighboring Sudan, according to UN figures. At the peak of the influx, “more than 1,000 people on average were arriving each day, overwhelming the capacity to provide aid,” a UN report said.
A refugee camp in Um Rakuba, Sudan, pictured in August. More than 50,000 Ethiopians have fled to Sudan since the Tigray conflict began in late 2020, according to the UN.
A refugee camp in Um Rakuba, Sudan, pictured in August. More than 50,000 Ethiopians have fled to Sudan since the Tigray conflict began in late 2020, according to the UN.
Meanwhile, attempts to leave Ethiopia by air by legal means have become increasingly difficult for Tigrayans, according to Ethiopian Airlines employees CNN spoke with.
Several attempted to leave by boarding planes from Addis Ababa’s Bole Airport as legitimate passengers but were denied access due to their Tigrayan ethnicity, they claimed. One former employee told CNN there were four checkpoints at the airport where passengers had their passports checked before departure.
“They check place of birth and name,” they told CNN, recalling three of their own failed attempts to leave. If the person was born in Tigray or had a Tigrayan name they were denied exit from Ethiopia, the former employee said.
As a result, several employees told CNN they escaped by working on board international flights as flight crew and fleeing when the aircraft landed abroad, often when the destination was in Europe or the US.
CNN has obtained IDs that confirm the identities of all four men who stowed away. Flight paths of the two flights — the one to Brussels and the one from Addis to Dulles airport through Dublin — have also been crosschecked on FlightRadar24.
Ethiopian Airlines has not responded to CNN’s request for comment regarding the stowaways’ journeys or the allegations of discrimination against Tigrayans.
This is not the first time Ethiopian Airlines has made headlines during the conflict in Ethiopia. In October last year CNN revealed that the airline had been ferrying weapons between Ethiopia and Eritrea at the outset of the conflict in November 2020, an act that was condemned by the international community as a potential violation of aviation law.
CNN’s investigation triggered calls by US lawmakers for sanctions and investigations into Ethiopia’s eligibility for a lucrative US trade program. Ethiopia was kicked out of the program over human rights violations at the start of 2022.
The airline has issued multiple denials about transporting weapons.
‘We were shaking’
After the aircraft carrying Yohannes and Gebremeskel landed in Brussels, the two waited for their chance to reach the terminal building.
“There were two guys working on the aircraft. One was unloading the cargo shipment and the other was coming with a torch around the plane,” Yohannes said. “So when the first was unloading the flowers we jumped to the ground — me and my friend — we jumped, and we ran to the terminal.”
Inside, employees gave them water and something to eat, but Yohannes and Gebremeskel were still in shock. “We were afraid they were going to send us back […] The guards, they brought us tea, but we were kneeling down on the ground, we were shaking,” Yohannes added.
Slowly, they felt a sense of relief, perhaps for the first time since they took off from Addis Ababa.
Their decision to flee had been prompted in part by reports that 38 Tigrayan security guards had been recently suspended at Bole Airport, meaning security was more lax than usual, they said.
“We were afraid of course … Luckily, we were not found. If we had been found, the punishment would have been harsh.”
Gebremeskel
But NISS, Ethiopia’s national intelligence security service, was still searching every part of the aircraft before departure, Gebremeskel explained, in order to prevent escapes. The Ethiopian Prime Minister’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, did not comment on these allegations.
Ethiopian Airlines has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on the security situation at Bole Airport
“We had some tools with us, we were afraid they were going to catch us because they check — the guy from the national intelligence security service checks every flight before departure,” Gebremeskel said.
“We were afraid of course. We were sitting with some tools with us. Maybe they will come to check that we’re working on it. Luckily, we were not found. If we had been found, the punishment would have been harsh.”
Yohannes hopes that in Belgium, he will find a country that will “respect my demands, the right to life.”
Pieter-Jan De Block, their lawyer, confirmed in a statement to CNN that both his clients had “obtained international protection in Belgium” and that they’d been released from the center where they were staying.
For Gebremeskel, the picture is bittersweet. With his family still far away — his parents are in a refugee camp in Sudan — and no money or job in Belgium, life is not easy. Although he has accommodation now, his first two nights after being granted asylum were spent sleeping at a train station.
He told CNN he hoped one day to return to Ethiopia but that until the country is a place where “people aren’t treated differently for their ethnicity,” that hope feels very remote.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 6, 2021
💭 My Note: Today fascist Abiy Ahmed Ali has named a new defense minister, traitor Tigrayan Abraham Belay. It is “symbolically interesting” to see a Tigrayan appointed as defense minister. I’ve stated in the past there are very cynic and satanic motives behind the appointment of all these Tigrayan technocrats.
Preparing for The #TigrayGenocide evil Abiy Ahmed and his Luciferian overlords brought Tigrayans to occupy key positions nationally and internationally:
👉 His Holiness Abune Mathias, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
👉 Dr. Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin, Minister of Health of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
👉 Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Director-General of the World Health Organization.
💥 Wow! Let’s connect the dots…this is how monster war criminal Abiy Ahmed Ali and his Luciferian babysitters are literally working hard to destroy Ethiopia, instantly, before our very eyes – with the help of the Amharas — and how they are preparing themselves to blame those Tigrayan appointees for all the evil deeds of the fascist Oromo regime in Addis Ababa.
(CNN) Ethiopia’s government has used the country’s flagship commercial airline to shuttle weapons to and from neighboring Eritrea during the civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a CNN investigation has found.
Cargo documents and manifests seen by CNN, as well as eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence, confirm that arms were transported between Addis Ababa’s international airport and airports in the Eritrean cities of Asmara and Massawa on board multiple Ethiopian Airlines planes in November 2020 during the first few weeks of the Tigray conflict.
It’s the first time this weapons trade between the former foes has been documented during the war. Experts said the flights would constitute a violation of international aviation law, which forbids the smuggling of arms for military use on civil aircraft.
Atrocities committed during the conflict also appear to violate the terms of a trade program that provides lucrative access to the United States market and which Ethiopian Airlines has benefited greatly from.
Ethiopian Airlines is a state-owned economic powerhouse that generates billions of dollars a year carrying passengers to hubs across the African continent and all over the world, and it is also a member of the Star Alliance, a group of some of the world’s top aviation companies.
The airline previously issued two denials about transporting weapons.
Responding to CNN’s latest investigation, Ethiopian Airlines said it “strictly complies with all National, regional and International aviation related regulations” and that “to the best of its knowledge and its records, it has not transported any war armament in any of its routes by any of its Aircraft.”
The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Military refills
Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia’s government and the ruling party in the Tigray region exploded on November 4, when Ethiopia accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front of attacking a federal army base.
Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, ordered a military offensive to oust the TPLF from power. Government forces and regional militias poured into Tigray, joined on the front lines by troops from Eritrea.
Thousands of people are estimated to have died in the conflict, which by many accounts bears the hallmarks of genocide and ethnic cleansing. While all sides have been accused of committing grave human rights abuses during Tigray’s war, previous CNN investigations established that Eritrean soldiers have been behind some of the worst atrocities, including sexual violence and mass killings. Eritrea has denied wrongdoing by its soldiers and only admitted to having troops in Tigray this spring.
Documents obtained by CNN indicate that flights carrying weapons between Ethiopia and Eritrea began at least as early as a few days after the outset of the Tigray conflict.
On at least six occasions — from November 9 to November 28 — Ethiopian Airlines billed Ethiopia’s ministry of defense tens of thousands of dollars for military items including guns and ammunition to be shipped to Eritrea, records seen by CNN show.
The documents, known as air waybills, detail the contents of each shipment. In one document, the “nature and quantity of goods” is listed as “Military refill” and “Dry food stuff.” Other entries included the description “Consolidated.” The records also had abbreviations and spelling mistakes such as “AM” for ammunition and “RIFFLES” for rifles, according to airline employees. They told CNN the spelling errors were introduced when the contents were manually entered by employees into the cargo database.
Benno Baksteen, chairman of DEGAS, the Dutch Expert Group Aviation Safety, told CNN that these waybills were required for all commercial flights as the crew on board need to know the contents of the cargo to ensure they are transported safely.
On November 9, five days after Abiy ordered a military offensive in Tigray, records show an Ethiopian Airlines flight transported guns and ammunitions from Addis Ababa to Asmara, Eritrea’s capital.
An air waybill and a cargo manifest from that date show that Ethiopian Airlines charged Ethiopia $166,398.32 for about 2,643 pieces of “DFS & RIFFLE WITH AM (sic)” on that flight. DFS is a reference to “dry food stuff,” according to airline sources.
Another air waybill from a few days later, November 13, has the same shipper and consignee. The content of that shipment was “military refill and dry food stuff,” according to the document. The shipments came at a time of increased military activity; security sources in the region told CNN the Eritreans needed re-supply for the fight in Tigray.
As planes went back and forth between the two countries, massacres of Tigrayans in the city of Axum and the village of Dengelat by Eritrean troops took place on November 19 and November 30 respectively.
Cargo documents show that the series of flights between Ethiopia and Eritrea continued until at least November 28, 2020.
Some current and former Ethiopian Airlines employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said the flights continued past this date but that the majority of arms trips to Eritrea were in November.
Both cargo and passenger planes were used in the operation, though CNN has no evidence that commercial passengers were on any of the flights carrying weapons. Many of these flights do not appear on popular online flight tracking platforms such as Flightradar24. When they do, the destination in Eritrea is often not visible and the flight path vanishes once the plane crosses the border from Ethiopia.
The employees told CNN the staff could manually turn off the ADS-B signal on board to prevent the flights being publicly tracked.
The flights were often assigned the same flight numbers, primarily ET3312, ET3313 and ET3314, with ‘ET’ being the code for Ethiopian Airlines. All the planes mentioned in the cargo files seen by CNN are American-made Boeing aircraft. The airline has been in a long relationship with the US aviation giant.
A Boeing representative declined to comment.
Ethiopian Airlines workers described witnessing other airline employees loading and unloading arms and military vehicles on flights directed to Asmara. A few even claimed they helped load the weapons on the planes themselves. All spoke of being ethnically profiled for being Tigrayan.
CNN has seen the Ethiopian Airlines’ ID cards of these employees and confirmed their identities.
One former employee told CNN they were instructed at Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport to load guns and four military vehicles onto an Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane that was due to fly to Belgium but was sent instead to Eritrea.
“The cars were Toyota pickups which have a stand for snipers,” the employee said. “I got a call from the managing director late at night informing me to handle the cargo. Soldiers came at 5 a.m. to start loading two big trucks loaded with weapons and the pickups.”
“I had to stop a flight to Brussels, a 777 cargo plane, which was loaded with flowers, then we unloaded half of the perishable goods to make space for the armaments.”
The former employee warned soldiers that the vehicles were carrying far more gas than was allowed under international air transport rules, but said they were overruled after a direct call from an army commander.
“He [the commander] said we are going to war and we need the fuel to be loaded,” the employee said. “Then I referred the issue to my manager and my manager took responsibility and allowed them to load it.”
The flight, loaded with both weapons and flowers, traveled to Eritrea, then returned to Addis before flying on to Brussels the following day, the employee said. CNN cross-referenced this testimony with Flightradar24 and found the record of an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft returning from the direction of Eritrea and flying to Brussels the next day, but could not independently verify it was the same flight referred to by the employee.
Days later, the employee said they were temporarily suspended from work. They believe they were suspended for being Tigrayan but also for the incident with the soldiers. The employee fled Ethiopia in March.
Ethiopian Airlines told CNN in its statement that no employees had been suspended or terminated due to their ethnic background.
It appears to be not the only long-distance international flight with unplanned stops. A flight from Addis Ababa to Shanghai on November 9, 2020, took a long detour via Eritrea according to the ADS-B signal that tracks the route on Flightradar24.
Several employees at the Addis Ababa airport said they saw multiple weapons flights leave for Eritrea each day at the outset of the conflict. They also spoke about flights carrying weapons from Eritrea back to Ethiopia. It’s unclear why armaments were being transferred back to Ethiopia.
One said they saw tanks and heavy artillery loaded onto planes coming to Addis Ababa, while small arms — mortars, launchers — were dispatched to Asmara. Employees told CNN they believed the smaller weaponry were being sent to Asmara to arm Eritrean troops.
All the employees said they were instructed by the airline to delete photos of the weapons from their phones. Not all of them did.
In June, photos circulated on social media platforms showing crates containing mortars on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight and the same crates being loaded on the plane in Massawa, Eritrea.
The company released a statement strongly denying the allegation that its planes were transporting weapons and claimed the photos were photoshopped.
However, CNN has corroborated the photos using visual analysis techniques, interviews and documentary evidence, dating them to a 777 Freighter cargo flight that flew from Ethiopia to Eritrea and back between November 8 and 9.
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