By Dr. Dawit Tesfay, Institutional Policy & Post-War State-Building Researcher, Horn of Africa Geopolitical Review
Executive Summary
The killing of Zewdu Haftu should never have become a referendum on whether power can defeat the law.
Yet that is precisely what the case has become. Zewdu’s death is a criminal tragedy. The subsequent controversy surrounding the investigation, prosecution, handling of evidence, judicial proceedings, and eventual acquittal has transformed it into something larger. A test of whether Tigray’s post-war institutions are capable of confronting politically sensitive allegations without bending the rule of law to influence, family connections, or institutional pressure.
The uncomfortable question is no longer confined to the identity and criminal responsibility of the defendants.
It is this: can a justice system remain genuinely independent when the institutions responsible for policing and investigating a case are connected—directly or indirectly—to the networks surrounding one of the accused?
That question cannot be answered with speeches about institutional independence. It must be answered through evidence, procedure, transparency, and accountability.
Zewdu Haftu was killed in Mekelle on 19 August 2023. In July 2025, Yared Gebresellasse and Angesom Hailemariam were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The proceedings had already attracted serious public attention because of allegations concerning interference, witness treatment, courtroom disruption, and the involvement of senior security figures.
The subsequent reversal and acquittal of the defendants in August 2026 intensified those concerns.
- An acquittal, by itself, does not prove corruption.
- A reversal, by itself, does not prove political interference.
- And a family relationship, by itself, does not establish criminal conduct by a public official.
Those safeguards matter.
But they cannot become a convenient shield against legitimate institutional scrutiny. When credible allegations arise concerning missing or unavailable evidence, potential conflicts of interest, police conduct, witness treatment and interference with judicial processes, the answer cannot be to demand public silence.
The answer is investigation.
The fundamental danger is the emergence of a public perception that the law is uncompromising when dealing with ordinary citizens but negotiable when it reaches people connected to power. Once that perception takes hold, the damage extends far beyond one case.
- It corrodes the legitimacy of the police.
- It weakens the judiciary.
- It discredits prosecutors.
- It humiliates victims.
- It discourages witnesses.
Ultimately, it teaches citizens a poisonous political lesson:
- Power protects its own, and
- A post-war society cannot be rebuilt on that lesson.
If justice becomes conditional on who you know, where you stand, and whose protection you possess, the state has not achieved the rule of law. It has merely institutionalised privilege.
1. Zewdu Haftu: When a Criminal Case Became a Test of State Legitimacy
Zewdu Haftu was 32 years old when she was killed in Mekelle during the Ashenda season in August 2023. According to reporting surrounding the case, she was walking with a friend when she encountered the men later prosecuted for her killing. The prosecution alleged that she resisted an attempted sexual assault and was violently dragged by her hair before being fatally crushed beneath a vehicle. The brutality of the alleged attack shocked the public.
But the subsequent handling of the case created an additional and more enduring problem. It exposed the distance that can exist between law on paper and justice in practice.
- A constitution may guarantee equality.
- A criminal code may prohibit murder.
- A police commission may have investigative powers.
- A prosecutor may have a legal mandate.
- A court may have judicial authority.
- None of those things, however, guarantees justice.
Justice depends on institutions having the independence, competence, and courage to exercise those powers without fear or favour.
The case was reportedly complicated from the outset. Reporting has raised questions about the treatment of a key witness, alleged intimidation involving a senior police official, and serious disruption of court proceedings.
In May 2025, violence inside the Mekelle City Central Court contributed to the suspension of court operations across Mekelle’s eight zones. These events should not be treated as procedural footnotes. They point to a much deeper problem.
A justice system that cannot protect its witnesses, judges, investigators, and prosecutors from intimidation is not merely inefficient. It is institutionally vulnerable. And once vulnerability enters the courtroom, power begins competing with law.
2. The 2025 Conviction: When the Public Saw a Possibility of Accountability
The July 2025 conviction carried significance beyond the punishment imposed. The court convicted the two defendants and sentenced them to life imprisonment without parole, characterising the crime as involving extreme cruelty.
For many observers, the verdict appeared to reaffirm a basic democratic principle. Family connections, social status, and proximity to authority cannot place a defendant beyond the reach of criminal law. That principle is indispensable.
But conviction alone cannot repair a damaged justice system. A functioning accountability system must investigate not only the alleged perpetrators of a crime but also credible allegations that someone attempted to obstruct the process by which the truth was supposed to be established. This distinction is crucial.
If the criminal defendants are punished but those who allegedly interfered with the investigation remain untouched, the visible crime may receive a verdict while the invisible system that enabled interference survives. That is not institutional reform. It is selective enforcement.
3. The Conflict of Interest That Cannot Be Washed Away
One of the most sensitive issues surrounding the case is the reported relationship between defendant Yared Gebresellasse and Colonel Gebreselassie Belay, a senior Tigray security official. That relationship does not establish that Colonel Gebreselassie interfered with the case. It must not be presented as proof of criminal conduct without evidence.
But pretending that such a relationship is institutionally irrelevant would be equally irresponsible.
- The correct question is not merely: “Has interference been proven?”
- The institutional question is: “Was there sufficient independence to ensure that interference could not occur—or could be investigated without fear?”
That is what a conflict-of-interest analysis is supposed to examine.
A senior official whose close relative is a criminal defendant should not be placed in a position where his institution controls investigators, evidence, witnesses, or enforcement decisions relating to that case.
Even where no wrongdoing has occurred, the appearance of compromised independence can itself damage public confidence. For public institutions, credibility matters. A citizen should not have to wonder whether the person wearing the uniform investigating a case is professionally accountable—or personally connected to one side of it.
4. The More Dangerous Corruption: Institutional Capture
Corruption is often imagined as a bribe changing hands. That is the crude version.
The more sophisticated form is institutional capture. Institutional capture occurs when public institutions continue to exist formally, but informal networks increasingly determine how they function.
- The police remain.
- The courts remain.
- The prosecutor remains.
- The laws remain.
- The offices remain.
But the practical question becomes: Who can influence the people inside those institutions?
That is where patronage becomes dangerous. A captured system may not openly cancel the law. It simply makes the law uneven.
- Some people are investigated aggressively.
- Others are investigated cautiously.
- Some witnesses are protected.
- Others are intimidated.
- Some evidence is pursued relentlessly.
- Other evidence somehow becomes unavailable.
- Some cases move quickly.
- Others disappear into administrative darkness.
The result is not necessarily spectacular corruption. It is something more difficult to detect: a system in which formal equality survives while substantive equality dies.
That is how institutions are hollowed out from within.
5. Patrimonial Politics and the Problem of Concentrated Power
The Zewdu Haftu case also raises a broader question about Tigray’s political inheritance. For decades, the TPLF exercised extraordinary political influence in Tigray and Ethiopia. That historical reality should be analysed seriously rather than converted into either mythology or blanket condemnation.
The issue is not whether every TPLF member, supporter, or former official is corrupt.
That proposition would be both unfair and analytically useless.
The deeper issue is the institutional culture created by prolonged concentration of political, military, and administrative authority.
When political networks become deeply intertwined with security institutions, when senior officials become difficult to challenge, and when personal relationships matter more than formal institutional boundaries, the result can resemble patrimonial governance.
Patrimonialism is not simply corruption. It is a political culture in which public authority becomes entangled with personal loyalty, familial relationships, and informal networks.
The state still exists. But access to the state becomes unequal. That is precisely why the Zewdu case deserves scrutiny beyond the courtroom. It forces Tigray to confront a question that political elites have repeatedly avoided:
Has the culture of protected networks actually disappeared, or has it merely changed its personnel?
6. The “Animal Farm” Problem: Equality in Law, Privilege in Practice
The deepest institutional danger can be reduced to one proposition. A law that applies differently according to political proximity is not a rule of law. It is a hierarchy of privilege. The ordinary citizen encounters the state as an authority. The politically connected citizen may encounter the state as a negotiable institution. That distinction destroys democratic legitimacy.
It creates two categories of citizenship:
- those who must obey the system, and
- those who know how to influence it.
This is the relevance of Orwell’s Animal Farm. The point is not that Tigray literally resembles Orwell’s fictional farm.
The point is the political warning:
- Equality becomes meaningless when those who control institutions can exempt themselves—or their networks—from the standards imposed on everyone else;
- A society cannot sustain that contradiction indefinitely;
- Eventually citizens stop asking whether the law is fair;
- They begin asking whose phone number they need, and
- That is the moment institutional decay becomes cultural decay.
7. The Missing-Evidence Question
Among the most serious issues raised around the latest judicial developments are allegations concerning digital, telecommunications and forensic evidence. This issue demands more than political argument. It requires a documented chain-of-custody investigation.
If a court requested telecommunications evidence, investigators and relevant institutions should be able to establish:
- What evidence was requested?
- When was it requested?
- Who received the request?
- Who had custody of the material?
- What was produced?
- What was not produced?
- Why was it unavailable?
- Was it preserved properly?
- Was its absence caused by negligence, incompetence, technical failure or deliberate interference?
Those questions are not attacks on judicial independence. They are precisely the questions necessary to protect judicial independence.
If evidence was merely unavailable because of administrative incompetence, that is already serious.
If evidence was deliberately withheld, the implications are considerably more severe.
If evidence was destroyed, manipulated, or concealed, then the issue may extend beyond the underlying homicide case into possible obstruction or abuse of public authority.
No responsible institution should fear such an investigation. Only an institution that has something to hide should fear transparency.
8. Judicial Independence Does Not Mean Judicial Immunity from Scrutiny
There is a line that must not be crossed.
- Criticising a judgment is legitimate.
- Threatening judges is not.
- Demanding an appeal through lawful channels is legitimate.
- Attempting to dictate the verdict is not.
- Investigating judicial misconduct is legitimate.
- Politically intimidating judges is not.
A court must remain free to acquit where the prosecution has failed to satisfy the applicable burden of proof. This principle protects everyone. But judicial independence cannot be transformed into institutional untouchability.
A judicial system worthy of public confidence must tolerate scrutiny of:
- evidentiary procedures,
- procedural irregularities,
- conflicts of interest,
- judicial conduct,
- prosecutorial decisions,
- police behaviour,
- missing records,
- witness mistreatment, and
- possible obstruction.
The correct democratic response to controversy is therefore neither mob justice nor institutional silence. It is lawful review.
- If an appeal is available, use it.
- If disciplinary proceedings are warranted, initiate them.
- If evidence-handling failures occurred, audit them.
- If misconduct is alleged, investigate it.
- If wrongdoing is established, prosecute it.
That is how a justice system defends itself without becoming defensive.
9. Ashenda’s Irony: A Woman’s Festival, A Woman’s Death
The circumstances surrounding Zewdu’s death carry a painful historical irony in Tigray. Ashenda is associated with women’s dignity, cultural expression, freedom, and celebration.
Yet during that Ashenda season, Zewdu allegedly lost her life in an act of extreme violence. The contradiction should disturb the conscience of every institution in Tigray.
A society cannot celebrate women’s freedom publicly while allowing women to discover privately that their safety depends upon whether their attackers have powerful connections.
Women’s dignity cannot be reduced to festivals, speeches, and symbolic gestures.
- It must exist in police stations.
- It must exist in prosecutors’ offices.
- It must exist in courtrooms.
- It must exist when a woman reports violence.
- And it must exist when the accused is connected to power.
A society proves that it respects women not by celebrating them once a year, but by defending their rights when defending those rights becomes politically inconvenient.
10. “Killing Her Twice”: Why the Acquittal Has Become a Moral Crisis
The phrase used by civil-society voices—that the acquittal amounts to “killing Zewdu twice”—should be understood, as a moral indictment, not a literal legal conclusion.
The first violence ended her life.
The second is the fear that the justice system did not deliver a process that her family and community can trust.
That distinction matters.
A judicial acquittal did not mean the victim’s life had no value.
But a justice system that couldn’t convincingly explain how controversial evidence was handled, how conflicts of interest were managed and how institutional independence was protected will inevitably deepen public suspicion.
The state therefore has an obligation beyond issuing a verdict.
- It must preserve confidence in the process.
- The family deserves answers.
- The public deserves transparency.
- The accused deserve due process.
And the institutions themselves deserve the opportunity to demonstrate that they were not captured.
11. Tigray Must Not Exchange One Patronage System for Another
This is where the case becomes politically larger than Zewdu. Tigray’s post-war transformation will fail if its political objective is simply to replace one group of powerful people with another.
- Changing personnel is not institutional reform.
- Changing slogans is not institutional reform.
- Changing parties is not institutional reform.
- Institutional reform means changing the rules governing power itself.
- The decisive questions are therefore straightforward:
- Can the police investigate senior officials?
- Can prosecutors prosecute politically connected individuals?
- Can judges rule against powerful security figures without fear?
- Can journalists investigate official misconduct
- Can civil-society organisations criticise government without intimidation?
- Can a public official be suspended while allegations are independently examined?
- Can evidence involving powerful people be preserved outside the control of interested institutions?
If the answer to these questions is no, then Tigray has not achieved institutional transformation. It has achieved only elite circulation. The faces change. The architecture remains.
12. Accountability Must Begin at Home
There is an uncomfortable contradiction in demanding international accountability for atrocities while accepting impunity at home.
Tigray cannot credibly demand justice for massacres, war crimes, sexual violence, forced displacement and other grave violations committed against Tigrayan civilians while simultaneously tolerating a culture in which politically connected individuals are perceived to enjoy special protection.
The principle has to be universal.
- No TPLF member is above the law.
- No TDF commander is above the law.
- No police commissioner is above the law.
- No regional official is above the law.
- No political family is above the law.
- No wealthy individual is above the law.
- No opposition figure is above the law.
- And equally:
- No ordinary citizen is beneath the protection of the law.
That is not political revenge. It is the minimum requirement of a functioning constitutional order.
13. What a Real Post-War Justice Reset Would Require
The Zewdu Haftu case should not end with another press statement. It should trigger institutional reform.
13.1. Independent investigation into alleged interference
Credible allegations involving police, security officials, investigators, prosecutors, witnesses, or courts should be examined by an independent body without institutional conflicts of interest.
13.2. Complete evidence audit
Digital, telecommunications, video, photographic and documentary evidence should be independently inventoried and its chain of custody documented.
13.3. Mandatory conflict-of-interest recusal
Senior officials should be required to recuse themselves from matters involving immediate family members.
13.4. Witness protection
Witnesses must be protected from intimidation, retaliation, arbitrary detention, and coercion.
13.5. Judicial protection
Courts must be physically and institutionally insulated from political, military, and factional pressure.
13.6. Independent police oversight
The police cannot be the sole institution responsible for policing itself.
13.7. Prosecutorial independence
Prosecutors must be able to appeal controversial decisions without political interference.
13.8. Transparent disciplinary proceedings
Where credible allegations involve public officials, investigations should not disappear behind administrative walls.
13.9. Asset and conflict-of-interest disclosure
Senior officials should be subject to meaningful financial and relationship-disclosure requirements.
13.10. Post-war Judicial Integrity Commission
Tigray should establish an independent mechanism capable of examining allegations of judicial interference, police misconduct, institutional corruption, and obstruction of justice.
Without these reforms, “judicial reform” risks becoming another phrase repeated by governments that have no intention of surrendering control over the institutions that protect them.
14. The Real Test of Political Maturity
The Zewdu Haftu case forces Tigray’s political leadership into an uncomfortable choice.
The first option is denial:
- “The institutions cannot be questioned;”
- “Criticism is politically motivated;”
- “The court has spoken; therefore, the matter is closed,” and
- “Those demanding investigation are enemies of the state.”
That approach may protect officials in the short term. It will destroy institutional credibility in the long term.
The alternative is more difficult.
- Investigate;
- Publish;
- Audit;
- Appeal through lawful channels;
- Protect witnesses;
- Remove conflicts of interest;
- Investigate obstruction;
- Defend judges from intimidation, and
- Accept the possibility that accountability may reach people whom the political establishment considers untouchable.
That is what institutional maturity looks like.
15. The Hard Truth About Power
Power becomes dangerous when officials stop seeing themselves as temporary custodians of public authority and start treating public institutions as personal property.
Security institutions become dangerous when loyalty is valued above legality.
Political parties become dangerous when historical sacrifice is converted into permanent entitlement.
And societies become vulnerable when citizens become so exhausted by war that they begin accepting injustice as the price of stability.
Tigray has already paid an extraordinary price for political violence. It cannot afford to construct its post-war future on another form of political impunity.
Ending armed conflict is only the beginning. The harder task is rebuilding the relationship between the citizen and the state.
That relationship rests on a simple proposition:
- The police are servants of the public, not guardians of political families;
- The prosecutor serves the public interest, not political patrons;
- The judiciary answers to law, not faction;
- Public office is a responsibility, not hereditary property, and
- Political influence must never become a substitute for legal accountability.
When those principles disappear, government may continue to function administratively. But legitimacy begins to die.
16. The Final Warning: This Is Bigger Than One Case
The most intellectually dishonest conclusion would be to declare that the acquittal automatically proves corruption. It does not.
The opposite conclusion is equally dishonest that because a court issued an acquittal, every question surrounding the case must therefore be illegitimate. It does not.
The serious position lies between those extremes.
- The justice system must be presumed capable of independence.
- But independence must be demonstrated when credible questions arise.
That is the burden of public institutions.
The Zewdu Haftu case therefore presents Tigray with a fundamental institutional test:
- Can the system investigate itself when the allegations reach into the security establishment, political networks, and powerful families?
- If it can, Tigray can begin rebuilding trust.
- If it cannot, then the post-war promise of institutional reform remains largely rhetorical.
The state should not fear an independent investigation. It should welcome one. Because if the allegations are unfounded, a transparent investigation will expose them. If misconduct occurred, an investigation would expose that too.
Either way, the public gains something essential:
- the truth and
- truth is the first condition of justice.
Conclusion: A Region Cannot Rebuild Itself If Justice Has Two Faces
Zewdu Haftu must not become another unresolved name in Tigray’s catalogue of violence. Her case should become a warning—and, more importantly, a turning point.
The issue is not simply whether two defendants were correctly convicted or correctly acquitted. The larger issue is whether the institutions surrounding that process were sufficiently independent, transparent, and accountable to command public confidence.
That is the real test.
Tigray cannot build a democratic future by reproducing the political habits that weakened its institutions in the past.
The answer is not to create another protected class. It is to abolish the idea of protected classes altogether.
The historical contribution of the TPLF does not place its former or current officials beyond scrutiny. The sacrifices of the TDF do not place commanders above the law.
- Political office does not create immunity.
- Military rank does not create immunity.
- Family connections do not create immunity.
- And the suffering of Tigray’s people does not justify sacrificing justice for political convenience.
The standard must be universal.
If an ordinary citizen can be investigated, a powerful official must be investigable.
If an ordinary citizen can be prosecuted, a politically connected relative must be prosecutable.
If citizens must obey court orders, public institutions must obey court orders.
If ordinary families must submit to judicial scrutiny, powerful families must submit to it as well.
That is not revenge.
That is not factional politics.
That is the rule of law.
Tigray now faces the question that political slogans cannot answer. If those who once claimed to liberate Tigray cannot tolerate accountability when power reaches their own institutions and families, then what, precisely, has been liberated?
A society can survive poverty.
It can survive political disagreement.
It can survive the scars of war.
What it cannot indefinitely survive is the conviction that justice belongs to the powerful.
Once citizens stop believing that the law protects them equally, the state begins losing its moral authority. First, law becomes selective. Then institutions become hollow and the public trust collapses. Eventually, citizens stop looking to the law for protection and start looking to networks, factions, and personal connections. This is the beginning of institutional disintegration.
Tigray has already suffered enough from politics built around power without accountability. It cannot afford to reproduce the same architecture under a different name.
Zewdu Haftu deserves justice. Her family deserves the truth. Women in Tigray deserve institutions that protect them when protection is politically inconvenient.
The accused deserve due process. And the people of Tigray deserve a justice system in which power is subject to law—not the other way around.
HAGR Editorial Principle
- Justice ceases to be justice when it is reserved for those without power.
- Accountability ceases to be accountability when it stops at the gates of the powerful.
- Peace ceases to be peace when victims are expected to accept impunity as the price of political stability.