Ethiopian police Saturday announced that they have arrested 22 members of what are called Kawarja Islamists in the Bale Zone of Oromia regional state of Ethiopia, a state run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) has said.
The EBC report cited zonal police authorities about the capture of the Kawarja Islamists in a joint security forces operation.
National Information and Security Services, Oromia Police and Militia forces from the locality took part in the operation.
Twenty one of them are Ethiopians and one is said to be a foreigner. According to the report from state media, they have been engaged in providing training, under the cover of preaching faith, for unspecified terrorist mission. The type of training provided is military in nature.
Police reportedly said that they targeted youth and individuals that seem to have credence in the community. The source also cited Oromia Broadcasting network to report that the group has members who took military training in Puntland.
Kawarja Islamists terrorists were said to have been operating at least since 2011. In that year, they were linked to the destruction of 50 churches in Asendabo, South West Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, police on Friday arrested Tamerat Negera, Former Addis Neger Newspaper journalist, in the capital Addis Ababa. According to disclosure from Terera Network, an Ethiopianist news channel on YouTube which he founded, he was taken from his residence in the morning around 10:30 local time.
After his return from exile in the United States, Tamrat and his colleagues have been promoting Ethiopianist ideas and values as opposed to ethnic nationalism and politics – something that brought about unprecedented destruction in Ethiopia since the invasion by Fascist Italy in the 1940’s.
Security Forces who took Tamrat from his residency told him that he is wanted for an inquiry the subject of which is undisclosed. Then they took him, according to Terrara Network, to the third police division in the city.
MG/abj/APA