Here is more detail on the murder for those who want it.
Copyright 1997 American Lawyer Media, L.P.
Fulton County Daily Report
December 18, 1997, Thursday
LENGTH: 1086 words
HEADLINE: Visual Aid Helped Jury Convict Runner
BYLINE: JUNE D. BELL; Staff Reporter.
BODY:
Large pieces of a Toyota Celica, a suitcase stuffed with clothes, scores of exhibits and sheaves of papers surrounded DeKalb County jurors deciding this week whether an Ethiopian-born runner killed his cousin.
But while locked up with more than 130 pieces of evidence, jurors in the case of Arega Abraha said they recalled a six- word chart prosecutor Elisabeth G. MacNamara displayed in closing arguments.
"The car, the gun, the victim, all come back to the defendant and no one else," MacNamara told the jury as she used the diagram to highlight critical physical evidence linking Abraha to the Jan. 14 death of his rebellious cousin, Aster Haile. The gun and car in Abraha's possession at the time of Haile's death both bore traces of her blood, and the bullet that killed her was fired from the .25-caliber Raven Arms gun, said MacNamara, a DeKalb County senior assistant district attorney.
"The poster helped," juror Ian Nelson, a 19-year-old college student, said in an interview after the verdict. "There was no one else it could possibly be."
In deliberations Tuesday afternoon, jurors initially voted 11-1 in favor of conviction, Nelson says. A 90- minute discussion and review of the evidence persuaded the holdout that Abraha killed his 28-year-old cousin, apparently when she balked at a marriage he'd arranged for her to a wealthy elderly white man in Marietta.
DeKalb Superior Court Judge Daniel M. Coursey Jr. sentenced Abraha, 36, to life in prison. The resident alien must serve at least 14 years before he can be considered for release and then could face deportation, MacNamara says.
'Can't Get Away from the Blood'
Another juror, who spoke on condition her name not be used, credited MacNamara's diagram with neatly summing up the case, saying, "The gun. The blood. The victim. The blood in the car. You can't get away from the blood. The blood was the deciding factor for all of us."
Her statement echoed MacNamara's forceful closing argument, in which she urged jurors to ignore the complex and unfathomable dynamics between the victim and the defendant and instead concentrate on the physical evidence.
Among the pieces of evidence prosecutors gave jurors were the Celica's passenger door, console and headliner--the gray-blue fabric that lined the inner side of the roof. Forensic experts testified they found that the car's interior contained invisible blood spatters, which they detected through sophisticated investigation.
The Celica, where MacNamara said Haile had been shot in the head before being dumped on the side of a road, had "obviously" been cleaned to remove visible bloodstains, MacNamara told jurors. But no one thought to scour the headliner, where infinitesimal blood stains could appear only as a result of an upward, high-velocity force, such as a bullet to the brain. State v. Abraha, No. 97CR2448 (DeKalb Super. indictment April 3, 1997).
"I don't care how many times Aster Haile rode in that car," MacNamara said forcefully. "People do not bleed up unless they've been shot by a gun."
Abraha's attorney, Michael J. Trost, said in closing arguments that prosecutors were relying on "bad science" and "unsupported speculation" in claiming the blood as Haile's. DNA testing was not as conclusive as MacNamara and Assistant District Attorney Carol M. Kayser made it appear to be, Trost said, adding that thousands of people in Atlanta may have similar DNA characteristics.
The reason that only specks of blood were found in Abraha's car was that Haile wasn't killed there, he said, asking, "How much blood would you have expected to see if someone was shot at point-blank range in a car?"
During the weeklong trial, MacNamara and Kayser presented evidence to show that Haile was slain by her cousin, a man she called "brother," when the usually docile woman refused to obey him. Instead, Haile pinned her hopes of citizenship and happiness on an Ethiopian man in Denver, a U.S. citizen she planned to visit in February, MacNamara said.
"What does he see going out the window? His control over Aster Haile," MacNamara said. "She never saw this fatal shot coming, ladies and gentlemen, and she never tried to avoid it."
MacNamara said Abraha kept copies of his cousin's divorce decree, itineraries and resident alien card. Jurors were able to view them during deliberations.
Trost contended that the state wrongly accused Abraha, who had set a world half-marathon record and was an advocate for humanitarian causes. The investigation should have focused on Haile's ex-husband, Haile Hagoss, who pressured Haile to repay him for her ticket to America, he said. Trost said detectives ignored him as a suspect in their zeal to pin the crime on Abraha.
That theory is ludicrous, MacNamara responded in closing arguments, because there was no evidence Hagoss was in Atlanta at the time of the slaying or that he had access to the gun or the car.
Trost said Abraha's travels after his cousin's death were not an attempt to flee but an effort to collect money for his legal defense from runners he'd befriended. He traveled under his own name and had a round- trip ticket, Trost said.
MacNamara said Abraha collected $34,000 in credit card advances. He loaded a suitcase with warm clothing he'd bought, perhaps because he planned to hide out in Canada, she suggested.
Fiancie's Testimony Didn't Help
The defendant did not testify. But his fiancie, Kathy Kohler, did. According to MacNamara's closing, Kohler told jurors that Abraha told her early in the day he was going running and later called to say he'd been in a minor fender-bender. The Emory doctoral student also said she suspected Hagoss was the killer.
Prosecutors used phone records to show that Kohler received a call from a pay phone in the area where the accident allegedly occurred. But the call had been placed days before the murder.
Juror Nelson says he and the other 11 jurors didn't believe Kohler. "We sat there, and one of the first things we said was, 'That woman is a liar,' '' he says.
Kohler and Abraha had no visible reaction when the verdict was read. One of Haile's friends, Samia Hussein, nodded as the foreman announced Abraha guilty of malice murder and felony murder. MacNamara told jurors Haile's astounding frugality helped her save about $12,000 she'd earned cleaning houses. Her staff will attempt to return that money to Haile's family in Ethiopia, MacNamara says. end
June D. Bell's e-mail address is
junebell@counsel.com
.
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1997
4 of 173 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1997 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
December 17, 1997, Wednesday, ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: LOCAL NEWS; Pg. 01D
LENGTH: 501 words
HEADLINE: Runner gets life sentence;
Found guilty: Arega Abraha plans to appeal the conviction for the Jan. 14 murder of his cousin, his attorney said.
BYLINE: Celia Sibley; STAFF WRITER
BODY:
Professional runner Arega Abraha was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday after a jury found him guilty of the Jan. 14 murder of his cousin.
The verdict came just 65 minutes after jurors began their deliberations in a small room filled with 140 pieces of evidence, ranging from small receipts to the door of Abraha's white Toyota Celica.
The lithe, well-dressed Ethiopian, who once was a celebrity in local running circles, remained stoic while jury foreman Jerry Mays read the verdict to the sparsely filled courtroom.
Abraha, 36, will be eligible for parole in 14 years, said lead prosecutor Elisabeth MacNamara.
"He certainly is deportable once the appeal process is over," she added.
Prosecutors said Abraha stuck a .25-caliber pistol to Aster Haile's forehead and pulled the trigger when he realized she was not going through with a marriage he had arranged for her to an older man. But the state never produced the older suitor as a witness, prompting defense attorney Michael Trost to refer to him as a "phantom" who was a figment of Haile's imagination.
Haile, 28, an illegal immigrant who was trying to find a way to stay in the United States, had purchased airplane tickets to Denver, where she planned to visit yet another marriage prospect, a doctor, who was related to a friend, prosecutors said.
Trost expressed disappointment with the verdict, saying, "I felt we raised credible issues that cast doubt on the state's case."
An appeal could be based in part on the judge's refusal to allow testimony about an earlier wound to the victim's head, Trost said.
Though that injury allegedly occurred long ago, Abraha supposedly took Haile to get medical attention. Thus the incident could account for the victim's blood on the covering of the interior of the car's roof, Trost said. Like her fiance, Emory University graduate student Kathy Kohler showed no emotion when the verdict was read.
"We've been hoping for the best and expecting the worst ---it's the only way to deal with this ---and laying ground for an appeal all year," she said. "We (Abraha's friends and supporters) still all believe in his innocence, and we are looking forward to a successful appeal."
Prosecutors were ebullient, though tired. MacNamara said this has been the most interesting case of her career because it allowed her insight into an unfamiliar culture.
The victim's friends from Ethiopia "loved Aster," she said, "and when we were getting ready for trial, they all cried. They are all wonderful people."
Samia Hussein's eyes filled with tears when she was asked how she felt after the verdict. "We are very happy," Hussein, a close friend of Haile, said softly. Hussein and other friends had testified that Haile came to America from a Kenyan refugee camp eager for a chance at a better life.
"She was known as a hard worker," said Assistant District Attorney Carol Kayser. "She was so frugal she didn't have that many clothes and she barely ate, and she had saved $ 12,000."
GRAPHIC: Color: Lead prosecutor Elisabeth MacNamara (above) points a finger to her head while holding in her other hand the blood-spattered roof of Abraha's car in her closing argument Tuesday to show how Aster Haile was shot in the head. / Photos by KIMBERLY SMITH / Staff
Color: Mug of Aster Haile. / Photos by KIMBERLY SMITH / Staff
Color: Mug of Arega Abraha. / Photos by KIMBERLY SMITH / Staff
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1997
9 of 173 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1997 American Lawyer Media, L.P.
Fulton County Daily Report
December 11, 1997, Thursday
LENGTH: 1243 words
HEADLINE: Fatal Matchmaker?;
Friend Says Victim Didn't Want to Wed Older Man; Defense Denies He Existed
BYLINE: June D. Bell; Staff Reporter.
BODY:
Aster Haile, who left Ethiopia for a better life in the United States, died from the single shot of a pistol pressed against her forehead. Her body was found Jan. 14 dumped on the side of a road.
DeKalb County police have no witnesses to the slaying but say the 28-year-old housekeeper lost her life at the hands of her cousin, a marathon runner named Arega Abraha.
In a Superior Court trial this week, prosecutors are building their case against Abraha on DNA evidence, a firearms expert and testimony by Haile's friends in Atlanta's Ethiopian community that she was being pressured into marrying a man she considered too old for her.
A defense lawyer referred to the alleged husband-to-be as a "phantom" whom the district attorney can't produce. State v. Abraha, No. 97CR2448 (DeKalb Super. indictment April 3, 1997).
In opening statements Monday evening, Assistant District Attorney Carol M. Kayser told jurors that Abraha, 36, killed his cousin when she refused to marry an older white man he had chosen for her. If convicted of the charges of malice murder and felony murder, he faces life in prison.
Abraha's attorney, Atlanta sole practitioner Michael J. Trost, suggested to jurors that his aggressive cross-examination of the state's witnesses would shred their credibility and leave no motive for the long- distance runner to kill the woman he called "sister" and had promised to protect.
Prosecution Theory Attacked
Despite the state's confidence in DNA analysis, the lawyer said, there's no proof the substance recovered from Abraha's white Toyota Celica was Haile's blood. And tests on the pistol may show that it was the murder weapon but not that Abraha used it, he said.
"The state's theory is inexplicable," Trost said. "It doesn't make any sense. " A more likely killer whom the police didn't investigate, he said, is Haile's ex-husband. He had threatened her and pressured her to repay her resettlement expenses, the lawyer told the jury.
Trost's star witness is expected to be Abraha's fiancie, an Emory doctoral candidate, who Trost said will testify that Abraha spent the day of the murder running in Kennesaw before getting caught in a fender- bender on the drive home. In an interview, he would not say whether Abraha will testify.
Kayser, the prosecutor, told jurors a Georgia Bureau of Investigation firearms examiner will testify that the pistol Abraha returned to a friend the day after the shooting was the murder weapon. She'll also call a DNA expert to testify that the blood on the gun barrel and Abraha's car matched Haile's, she said.
About 20 other witnesses, including some Ethiopians aided by an interpreter, were to testify about Haile's life and final days, according to the prosecution.
Kayser said Haile settled in the United States in 1993 with her Ethiopian husband. The marriage didn't last, and at Abraha's urging she moved to Atlanta. Haile lived in a Buford Highway apartment and cleaned houses to support herself. She was anxious about her residency status, Kayser said, because her green card had expired. Marrying an American would allow her to remain legally in the United States.
Two friends of Haile's, Genet Gebrewid and Samia Hussein, testified that Abraha had picked out a husband for her whom she did not want to marry.
The first testimony suggesting that Haile was afraid of her cousin came late Tuesday.
On redirect, Haile's friend and neighbor Gebrewid told jurors that Haile had confided to her that Abraha had threatened to kill her if he ever learned she was hiding money from him.
"Did she tell you this more than one time?" asked Senior Assistant District Attorney Elisabeth G. MacNamara, who is prosecuting the case with Kayser.
"Every time," Gebrewid said emphatically.
Trost asked why she didn't share this information with detectives who interviewed her after Haile's death.
"At the time we were really sad," she replied. "The only thing is we were just answering the questions."
Trost suggested that Haile feared not her cousin but her ex-husband, who wanted repayment of the money he had spent bringing her to the United States.
"No," said Gebrewid.
(Gebrewid's name was spelled several ways in court papers; Susan A. Cobleigh, office administrator for the District Attorney's Office, says the preceding is the official version.)
'Brother' Was 'Like a God'
The other friend, Hussein, said Haile had to obey her cousin, whom she called "brother."
"She also believe her brother like a god," Hussein said. "When she do something, she scared if he don't know."
Hussein testified she and Haile had shopped for new clothes and shoes to impress the man Abraha wanted her to marry. Though Haile told Hussein after the meeting that the suitor was too old for her, she agreed to have lunch with him and Abraha on Jan. 14, the day she died, Kayser said.
That morning, Haile cleaned a house and returned to her apartment with an uncashed check for the job. She ate a late breakfast with Gebrewid, the last witness who saw her alive. Around 9:30 p.m., her body was found on a westbound exit of U.S. 78. She had no handbag or identification but was wearing jewelry, including gold rings, Kayser said. Investigators found no signs of sexual assault.
Two DeKalb County homicide investigators interviewed Abraha, who told them he had had no contact with his cousin that day, Kayser said.
A search of Abraha's car found human blood on the passenger seat fabric and door, the console and the headliner, Kayser said. Police couldn't find Abraha after a Jan. 22 warrant was issued for him for Haile's murder. He was picked up two days later in the Cincinnati airport carrying $34,000 in cash and expensive clothing, Kayser said.
Abraha's attorney said his client
wasn't on the run. He had a return ticket to Atlanta and had left his passport at home, Trost said, and was traveling to see friends and supporters he met through running circles. He feared he'd be accused of his cousin's slaying and needed to raise money for his legal defense, Trost said.
Abraha settled in Atlanta about a year after he set the 1981 world record for the half marathon, Trost said. He worked at the DeKalb Farmers' Market and Harry 's Farmer's Market while running hundreds of races, visiting schools to promote democracy and raising money for Ethiopian causes, he said.
Haile's friends said Abraha knew her through her brother, who'd asked him to look out for her in the United States. Abraha had also introduced Haile to the man she married and later left, Trost said, emphasizing that his client did not arrange the marriage but only helped the couple get acquainted.
Haile's friends testified she never told him the name of the man she was to marry. All she said, Gebrewid testified, was, "He is rich man, old and he is white." He was also a Marietta resident and a U.S. citizen, she testified.
The man's testimony would be critical in establishing a motive for Haile's slaying, but prosecutors have been unable to find him. His absence, Trost said, shows that Haile fabricated the story of the lunch appointment and the arranged marriage.
"Aster was sometimes strangers with the truth," Trost told jurors in his opening statement. He said the dead woman had a tendency to lie or exaggerate. "There is not going to be evidence that this phantom white man ever existed," he said. end
June D. Bell's e-mail address is
junebell@counsel.com
.
LOAD-DATE: December 11, 1997
13 of 173 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1997 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
December 8, 1997, Monday, ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: LOCAL NEWS; Pg. 01C
LENGTH: 508 words
HEADLINE: Murder trial for runner starts today;
A professional athlete, Arega Abraha is accused of shooting his cousin and dumping her body.
BYLINE: Celia Sibley; STAFF WRITER
BODY:
Arega Abraha, once one of Atlanta's top professional runners, goes on trial today for murder, accused of shooting his cousin and dumping her body on U.S. 78 last January after she backed out of a marriage he had arranged for her.
Aster Haile, 28, died of a single gunshot to the forehead, and her body was found by motorists along the highway. She had moved to Atlanta three years earlier from Ethiopia with help from Abraha.
Since his arrest in January, Abraha, once on a 125-mile per week practice regimen, has only been able to run around his pod at the DeKalb County Jail.
No members of Abraha's family will travel here to lend him support, but his fiancee of two years, who is a doctoral candidate at Emory University, is expected to be at his side, said his defense attorney, Michael Trost.
Both the prosecution and defense are keeping mum about their strategies.
"The state will have at least 22 witnesses," said Assistant District Attorney Carol Kayser, who declined further comment. Today's proceedings will mostly be devoted to jury selection, said DeKalb Assistant District Attorney Elisabeth MacNamara.
If convicted, Abraha, 36, faces life in prison. His trial is expected to last more than a week.
DeKalb police said the murder weapon was a .25-caliber pistol Abraha had borrowed from a friend and returned the day after Haile's body was found. Traces of human tissue were found in the barrel, police said.
Investigators found bloodstains in Abraha's Toyota Celica, plus several bags of marijuana. He was arrested Jan. 16 for possession and intent to distribute marijuana and released on a $ 2,000 bond.
Shortly afterward, Abraha took a flight to New York. He was arrested Jan. 24 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on an airplane at the Cincinnati airport and held for 17 days in the Boone County, Ky., jail before being returned to Atlanta.
At a pretrial hearing, two of Haile's friends testified she had agreed to see Abraha the day of her death to meet for the second time the man she was to marry. DeKalb police said Abraha was to be paid by the suitor, an older man who drove a Jaguar, for arranging the marriage.
One of Haile's friends told the court she had encouraged the marriage because she could not imagine a relative choosing a spouse who would not be a suitable match for a family member. But an acquaintance told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Haile had decided not to marry the man because he was too old.
Members of Atlanta's Ethiopian community say the practice of arranged marriages is declining in Ethiopia and they questioned whether this case has anything to do with Ethiopian tradition. They pointed out that the suitor was not even a native of the African country.
Raised in a middle-income family, Abraha fled his homeland two decades ago, living for a while in Europe before settling in Decatur and earning a living as a full-time runner capable of completing a 10-kilometer contest in less than 30 minutes. Most of the 170 races he won were on a local level.
GRAPHIC: Color mug of Arega Abraha
LOAD-DATE: December 9, 1997
18 of 173 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1997 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
February 14, 1997, Friday, ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: LOCAL NEWS; Pg. 04C
LENGTH: 1463 words
HEADLINE: Decatur athlete now faces a race for his life, future; In a different spotlight: Ethiopian runner Arega Abraha held his country's flag last year in the Olympic Games. Now he's being held in jail, charged with killing his cousin Aster Haile, allegedly after she backed out of an arranged marriage.
BYLINE: Bill Torpy; STAFF WRITER
BODY:
Until last month, Decatur-based running sensation Arega Abraha was on a 125-mile weekly training program - the equivalent of running from Atlanta to Chattanooga.
Now he must make do trotting around the basketball court at the DeKalb County Jail.
"I guess he can run in small circles," said Michael Russo, attorney for Abraha. "He's just another inmate in the jail."
Abraha is charged with shooting and killing his cousin, Aster Haile, 28, after she backed out of a marriage he allegedly set up for money. He was captured by the FBI last month in Cincinnati.
For a man who courted fame - Abraha often passed out autographed photos of himself to bemused runners at local races - it was a dramatic turn of fate.
Abraha, a 35-year-old Ethiopian native, spent much of his life almost-famous. He showed early promise and won 170 races. But most of them were on the local level and he never reached his sport's top echelon.
The Olympic spotlight did glint on him last summer, although not as he had dreamed.
As the women's marathon neared the 20-mile mark, Abraha stepped around the barricades and ran alongside Ethiopian runner Fatuma Roba, the eventual winner.
"The camera followed him for 10 seconds and the (TV) announcers mentioned it was him and that he was carrying the Ethiopian flag," said Dan Batchelor, a Roswell chiropractor who took part in the Opening Ceremonies with Abraha. "It was important for him to wave the flag."
Maybe it was an overflow of nationalistic pride. Or maybe he was just catching a flicker of another's spotlight.
His own story was heroic. He often told of how he escaped from Ethiopia in 1977 as Communist-backed soldiers fired at him as he dashed for the border. He was already a competitive runner when he arrived in Atlanta in 1981 and became known in local running circles. He later started the World Peace Run and met President Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter during his personal campaign for peace.
Abraha was returned to DeKalb County on Feb. 10, after spending 17 days in a Kentucky jail. The FBI captured him Jan. 24 in an airplane in the Greater Cincinnati Airport. Russo says Abraha was returning home after a trip to New York, where he went to drum up financial support to defend himself from charges he knew were coming.
He keeps in touch with supporters from jail, calling collect to his lawyer, fiancee and friends. Tegegne Haile was handling a crush of customers at his Auburn Avenue grocery when such a call came.
"He sounded normal, like the old Arega," said Haile, an Ethiopian native who is no relation to Aster Haile. "He said he did not do it."
Haile, however, has removed the photos of Abraha that had hung in his store.
"Right now, my sympathy goes to the deceased," said Haile, who met Abraha in the early 1980s when he translated for the runner after a failed marathon. He said Abraha took his bad fortune with grace.
"He has not shown me this side," Haile said, referring to the allegations of violence. He, as have several others, said Abraha was a difficult man to know well. "Maybe he has two personalities: one public, one that's darker."
Abraha is certainly a man of contradictions.
He forever spoke of his pride in his homeland. But members of Atlanta's Ethiopian organizations say Abraha was never active in the community. In fact, his star in the Ethiopian community had dimmed because he supported the new government controlled by his ethnic minority, the Tigreans.
Abraha often bragged of opportunity in the United States, said Elias Mohamed, an acquaintance. But he also told Batchelor he grew tired of U.S. materialism and wanted to make money and return to Ethiopia.
He helped friends and family members come to the United States, loaned them money and got them jobs at Harry's Farmers Market, the business that sponsored him. He even helped buy his mother a home in Ethiopia. But several people said he quickly turned on those he helped, repeatedly demanding to be paid back or speaking poorly of them. Tegegne Haile said Abraha had fallen out with his younger brother, Haile Abraha, who lives in Atlanta and returned to Ethiopia to bury his cousin.
Friends say Abraha could not stand being near cigarette smokers. But police say they found several small bags of marijuana in his 1987 Toyota when they searched it after the slaying. He was charged with intent to distribute.
Abraha promoted himself as a man of peace from a war-torn land. But police say he shot his cousin in the head Jan. 14 while she sat in his auto and then dumped her body out on the shoulder of Stone Mountain Freeway near Memorial Drive.
Abraha helped Aster Haile move to the United States three years ago. She and her boyfriend, Girma Mekonnen, lived with him. Mekonnen said the arrangement soured. Haile didn't speak English well, didn't work much except to clean a few houses and could barely negotiate the city by bus. "Abraha always bothered her for money," said Mekonnen, who had broke up with Haile. Haile felt pressure from Abraha to get married, he said.
Aster Haile's neighbor, Tesefy Belay, said Aster felt Abraha was overbearing. "She said he cares too much for money," said Belay. "I don't think she should feel that she owes him. In our country, we expect help from brothers and sisters."
Three days before her death, Haile asked her friend, Samia Hussein, to go shopping with her to buy a dressy new outfit to impress a potential suitor. "Her brother (Haile called Abraha that) said 'I want you to meet a guy; he's rich. I want you to marry him,' " said Hussein. "She was so happy and so excited."
Haile was brokenhearted the next day. The suitor - a white man who drove a Jaguar - was too old, Haile told her friend. (Police don't know the man's identity and are still seeking him for questioning.) Hussein said Abraha insisted on a second meeting on Jan. 14.
A motorist with car trouble that night found the body, described as being "dressed in fashionable evening wear - a blazer, short skirt, jewelry."
Members of Atlanta's Ethiopian community claim the tradition of arranging marriages is dying, and point out that the suitor was not even Ethiopian. "There must be something more to this than just an arranged marriage," said Elias Kifle, the editor of the Ethiopian Review, a magazine based in Atlanta.
Police quickly suspected Abraha. They searched his car and arrested him on marijuana charges Jan. 16. He was questioned for seven hours, according to Russo. A police report says only the passenger side of his Toyota had been cleaned. Bloodstains were found in the car, said police spokesman Chuck Johnson.
Abraha's family was part of Ethiopia's middle class. There were eight children. After leaving Ethiopia, Abraha lived in Europe for four years before moving to Atlanta, which now has an estimated 10,000 Ethiopian residents, said Kifle.
One of the world's oldest and poorest nation's, Ethiopia is a land long roiled by war.
Thousands of refugees fled after a Communist dictatorship took over in 1974, plunging the nation into a cycle of rebel attacks, droughts and a famine that killed a million people during the mid-1980s. Abraha's brother Berhane was killed during the fighting.
The Marxist government fell in 1991 and was replaced by a coalition of Eritreans and Tigreans (two of the nation's estimated 80 ethnic groups). The Eritreans formed their own nation in 1993 and the Tigreans, who number a tenth of the nation's 55 million residents, formed a government. Amnesty International reports widespread political jailings, torture and disappearances wrought by the Tigrean minority against the majority Oromos and Amaharas ethnic groups.
"There was support for the new government for a while because they talked of democracy," said Mohamed Hassen, an Ethiopian native and a professor of African history at Georgia State University. "But what they said and what they did were very different. They are very brutal. Many people here have parents and relatives affected. The pain back home affects people here."
Abraha, a Tigrean, alienated many countrymen here when he traveled to Ethiopia in 1992 and then effusively praised the new government. "Before, in Ethiopia, if you speak, you die," he told The Atlanta Journal- Constitution in a story after his return. "But nobody arrests you now. I love it."
"Prior to this government, all Ethiopians go out and cheer Abraha," said Haile, the Auburn shopkeeper. "We were all Ethiopians united in opposition (to the Communist government). People came to wave flags.
"Now this government came in and most people don't support it. But he liked what this government did; it was his people. I have seen his support dwindling. There's not nearly as many flags for him."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Arega Abraha./ DERRICK MAHONE / Staff
Photo: mug of Aster Haile
LOAD-DATE: February 15, 1997