Ethiopian PM said to complain 4 war criminals among those brought to ‘Israel’

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed angrily complained in a phone call with Israeli Occupation Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that Ethiopians brought to Israel in recent months during an intensifying war in the African country have included officers involved in war crimes, Israeli Channel 13 news said on Monday.

Channel 13 cited a security source involved in the matter saying at least four officers — among the over 2,000 people brought to ‘Israel’ over the past year — are suspected of taking part in rebel massacres in the Tigray region.

Israeli Haaretz reported that when the so-called immigration authority began looking into the matter, it discovered that most of the 61 Ethiopians brought to ‘Israel’ over the last several months had arrived at the request of a single Israeli who actually just wanted to bring his ex-wife and employees to ‘Israel’.

The secret decision to bring the group of Ethiopians to ‘Israel’ was made earlier this year after information indicated that their lives were in danger.

At that time, Ethiopia’s civil war was still in its early stages, and most of the fighting was taking place in the northern province of Tigray, where the Ethiopians in question were living.

Because they were not Jewish themselves, instead only thought to have Jewish roots, they could immigrate to ‘Israel’ only through a cabinet decision, Haaretz said.

Bennett’s cabinet gave the operation the green light and the plan was put into motion – 61 Ethiopians would arrive in Israel.

They were taken to an absorption center in Beit Alfa, where they underwent an identification process by the Interior Ministry and the Immigration and Population Authority.

The occupation authorities soon realized that they probably did not have Jewish descendants at all and that they did not actually live in the conflict zone.

In light of this, the Immigration Authority launched a secret investigation into the matter.

The investigation, whose findings were obtained by Haaretz, concluded that there are “major doubts” about whether the immigrants actually have Jewish roots, even though they submitted affidavits saying they did.

Moreover, it said, most “didn’t come from the conflict zone as claimed, and their lives weren’t at risk at all.”

The authority then began looking into who drafted the list of 61 immigrants. It then discovered that 53 of them came at the request of and based on information provided by a single Israeli identified in the document as Saraka Siom.

As far as Haaretz can determine, he moved to Israel in 1996, has no official position and is not a well-known figure in Israel’s Tigrayan community.

The investigation found that the 53 people included “his Christian ex-wife, who came to Israel with her Christian husband and the three children they had together,” as well as “two boys who claimed to be his sons.”

Several others “will work or have worked in Siom’s businesses.”

The tone of the document reveals that the authority was furious.

“The feeling we have is that some kind of planned conspiracy was concocted here that exploited the system,” its conclusion says. “More remains concealed than revealed about the intentions of the community’s representatives in Israel.”