Farah Karimi van OXFAM/NOVIB verdient 115.000 Euries. Deze graaister, knufful allochtoon Van GroenRechts is de zus van Herfkens met de appartement van 7000 dollar per maand. Schop haar a.u.b richting de ellende in Haiti of Pakistan.

An Egged bus driver is being sued for NIS 200,000 after allegedly slandering, insulting, and verbally and physically assaulting an Ethiopian passenger, according to a statement released by Tebeka, an advocacy organization for Ethiopian Israelis.

The Ethiopian college student waited at a bus stop in Rishon Leziyyon, and tried to board the bus, but the driver closed the door in her face, refusing to let her on. She managed to get on the bus anyway, and the driver yelled at her, saying "I don't let black Ethiopians on my bus," and "these blacks - who let you into Israel?"

The driver added: "All of these kushim [a derogatory term for Africans] should be sent back to Ethiopia. You are a stupid nation, and you damage our land." 

The passenger asked the driver not to speak to her, and in response, the driver grabbed her skirt, not allowing her to proceed onto the bus.

At a hearing conducted by Egged, the driver did not express regret and did not apologize. He said he stands by his opinios about Ethiopians. Egged fined the driver with one and a half months' salary. The Ministry of Transportation also pressed charges against the driver and Egged.

Tomer Reif and Hila Ben Harosh, the lawyers representing the student, are part of a Project "My Brother's Keeper," in which lawyers represent Ethiopians that turn to Tebeka pro bono.

An Egged bus driver is being sued for NIS 200,000 after allegedly slandering, insulting, and verbally and physically assaulting an Ethiopian passenger, according to a statement released by Tebeka, an advocacy organization for Ethiopian Israelis.

The Ethiopian college student waited at a bus stop in Rishon Leziyyon, and tried to board the bus, but the driver closed the door in her face, refusing to let her on. She managed to get on the bus anyway, and the driver yelled at her, saying "I don't let black Ethiopians on my bus," and "these blacks - who let you into Israel?"

The driver added: "All of these kushim [a derogatory term for Africans] should be sent back to Ethiopia. You are a stupid nation, and you damage our land." 

The passenger asked the driver not to speak to her, and in response, the driver grabbed her skirt, not allowing her to proceed onto the bus.

At a hearing conducted by Egged, the driver did not express regret and did not apologize. He said he stands by his opinios about Ethiopians. Egged fined the driver with one and a half months' salary. The Ministry of Transportation also pressed charges against the driver and Egged.

Tomer Reif and Hila Ben Harosh, the lawyers representing the student, are part of a Project "My Brother's Keeper," in which lawyers represent Ethiopians that turn to Tebeka pro bono.

The following is an excerpt from an Africa-Asia Confidential article on Ethiopia and India.

———————————–
The Addis government shows scant regard for the potential local impact of massive Indian investment in floriculture and biofuels.

Ethiopia is renowned more for its famines than for its fertile fields but land leasing has become a burgeoning business in some of the most unlikely locations. Vast swathes of arable land, a permissive government and geographical proximity have garnered interest in agricultural investment in Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia, China and India. India is the current leader in the stakes and, with more than 400 companies with projects in development, cumulative Indian investment in Ethiopia is approaching US$4.2 billion.

… in its attempt to attract investment, the government [Ethiopia] is not considering sustainability.

Obama with the Ethiopian Killer, dictator.

The United States cautioned Ethiopia Wednesday that future bilateral relations will be shaped by whether the Addis Ababa government is responsive to international criticism of its just-completed elections.

The State Department said the election rules heavily favored the ruling party, which virtually swept the parliamentary vote.

The Obama administration says while it values Ethiopian cooperation on regional security and other issues, it is disappointed with the conduct of the election and warned that the relationship will be affected by whether or not the government addresses election concerns.

The comments follow the release of provisional election results in Addis Ababa showing the ruling party and its allies winning all but three of more than 500 parliamentary seats.

State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley said freedom of choice for Ethiopian voters was "constrained" throughout the electoral process by actions of the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the national elections board, and the ruling party and its supporters.

He said election laws and procedures enacted after the country's last election in 2005 created a "clear and decisive" advantage for the ruling EPDRF coalition.

Crowley said it is important that steps be taken to "level the playing field" and to allow all factions to take part in the process without fear or favor.  Whether that occurs, he said, will "influence the future direction" of U.S. Ethiopian relations.

"To the extent that Ethiopia values the relationship with the United States, then we think they should heed this very direct and strong message," he said.  "We value the cooperation that we have with the Ethiopian government on a range of issues including regional security, including climate change for example.  So we will continue to engage this government.  But we will make clear that there are steps that it needs to take to improve democratic institutions," Crawley stressed.

While the Ethiopian government has said the election was free, fair and democratic, the European Union and the White House - in a statement late Tuesday - said it fell short of international standards.

The White House statement expressed disappointment that U.S. embassy officials, seeking to observe the Sunday voting, were denied permission to travel outside the capital to visit polling places.

It commended the people of Ethiopia for their civic participation and the fact that the voting was peaceful, but it said limits on observers and harassment of independent media representatives were "deeply troubling."

EUROPEAN UNION
ELECTION OBSERVATION MISSION
ETHIOPIA 2010
Parliamentary and Regional Council Elections
Letter to the Editor
To: ENA, Ethiopian News Agency
From: Thijs Berman, EU EOM Chief Observer
Addis Ababa, May 26, 2010
Dear Sir,
With more than great interest I have read your article this morning (“EU EOM says
NEBE competent, professional to administer national election”, as published in the
Ethiopian Herald) on our findings regarding the May 23 elections in Ethiopia. You may
imagine that I, as the Chief Observer, find it highly important that the Ethiopian citizens
have full access to accurate public information on these findings.
Being a former journalist myself, I understand that you cannot possibly highlight
everything present in a report of 11 pages, in an article that is necessarily much shorter.
However, in this article, you exclusively show the positive points we have mentioned on
these elections. Not the smallest point of our regrettably important list of factual criticism
found room in your text.
We drew a nuanced, albeit critical picture of these elections. One the one hand, these
elections were well organized, orderly, peaceful and calm until the day after election day.
On the other hand, there was no level playing field between the ruling party and the
opposition. The ruling party has used state resources in its campaign. Many opposition
leaders are in exile or in prison. Furthermore, the issue of transparency raises serious
concerns, and fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of information, are not fully
respected. These findings are documented by facts, observed by our 170 highly
professional observers.
I would hope that your newspaper attaches just as much importance as I do to balanced
information, and that you would wish to inform the Ethiopian citizens about these facts.
This requires that you allow your readers to form their opinion on all our findings in a
balanced way, in respect of the binding Ethiopian Media Code of Conduct for the
elections (Art. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.12b; Art.3.1, 3.5 in the draft version) of which, regrettably,
your article is in clear violation.
Perhaps it would ask too much space in your newspaper to publish the executive
summary of our Statement fully. Instead, I would urge you to publish this letter as a right
to reply, with our short press release on our Preliminary Statement, and the link to the EU
EOM website (www.eueom-ethiopia.org) where your readers can download all our texts
freely.
Best regards,
Thijs Berman
EU EOM Chief Observer

Vancouver Sun

After Ethiopia's old dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam murdered the man he had deposed, Emperor Haile Selassie, he capped his triumph by having the body buried under his office floor.

Ethiopia's current leader, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who led the rebellion that deposed Mengistu in 1991, has not been quite so utilitarian in how he disposes of his opponents.

But critics say Meles has been just as effective in creating what amounts to a repressive one-party state in what was once a country carrying reasonable hopes of leading a democratic upsurge in Africa.

There is a fine example of Meles' skills as an elected despot in the results of last Sunday's vote which will give his Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) all but one or two seats in the 547-seat parliament.

Election observers from the European Union say all the power and influence of the government was marshaled behind Meles' EPRDF.

The chorus of criticism was taken up on Tuesday by Washington where the assistant secretary of state for Africa, Johnnie Carson, said: "While the elections were calm and peaceful and largely without any kind of violence, we note with some degree of remorse that the elections were not up to international standards."

No doubt the remorse in the United States is genuine because Meles is Washington's and Europe's man in the Horn of Africa.

Washington has on occasion expressed concerns about Meles's repressive instincts, especially after the last elections in 2005 when the opposition took to the streets claiming massive fraud. Two hundred people were killed in the crackdown and many more are still in prison.

But criticism has been muted because Meles has been the go-to guy for American administrations attempting to control the upsurge in Muslim fundamentalism in Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan.

Meles is also the recipient of close to $1 billion a year in foreign aid, more than two-thirds of it from the U.S. and much of the rest from Europe.

And as many African potentates before Meles have discovered, accepting western aid seldom increases the outside pressure for reform. All too often donor countries become captives of their aid budgets and unwilling to use leverage on recipient countries for fear of upsetting domestic political priorities.

That certainly seems to be the case with Ethiopia, where there has been growth in the gross domestic product of more than 10 per cent for several years. So government aid agencies in Europe and the U.S. chalk Ethiopia up as a success and do not look at what is happening in other areas of the country's civic life.

But other arms of government do look. Last year in its report on global human rights, the U.S. State Department accused the Ethiopian government of "unlawful killings, torture, beating, abuse and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces, often acting with evident impunity."

New York-based Human Rights Watch published a scathing report in March.

"Expressing dissent is very dangerous in Ethiopia," said the report.

"The ruling party and the state are becoming one, and the government is using the full weight of its power to eliminate opposition and intimidate people into silence."

The way Human Rights Watch describes it, it was not necessary for the EPRDF to stuff ballot boxes last Sunday.

Right down to the village level, governing party cells and local administrations are interwoven. They ensure government services, such as the allocation of seeds and fertilizers, and microcredit loans, do not go to government critics.

So it can be a choice between supporting the opposition or feeding your family.

But there is an opposition and it may yet take to the streets in revulsion at this election as it did in 2005.

One of the leaders is a 35-year-old lawyer and former judge, Birtukan Mideksa, who is sometimes called Ethiopia's Aung San Suu Kyi. She is a leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and was arrested for taking part in the 2005 demonstrations. She was pardoned in 2007, but rearrested the following year and is now serving a life sentence.

Meles has not buried her under his office floor, but he might as well have done. Last year he said she will never be released and she is "a dead issue."

Supporters of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi run past Ethiopian Federal policemen during a rally at the Meskel Square in Addis Ababa, May 25, 2010. Zenawi urged the international community on Tuesday to respect his landslide election win and said foreign forces could not overturn the outcome and blood should not be shed.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopian police shot dead two opposition members in the sensitive Oromia region after an election the ruling party won by a landslide, an opposition party and the government said Wednesday.

World

The electoral board said Tuesday the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and allied parties had won 534 seats out of 536 declared, giving Prime Minister Meles Zenawi most seats in the 547-member parliament.

The shootings occurred over a two-day period, the opposition said.

"One was shot Sunday and one was shot yesterday," Merera Gudina, leader of the opposition Oromo People's Congress (OPC) told Reuters. "The government is trying to prevent protests by massively repressing the people."

Government head of information, Bereket Simon, said one man was shot after trying to storm an office where ballots were being counted and the other was shot a day later by a policeman whom he had beaten during the same incident.

"It is unfortunate that the men were killed," Bereket told Reuters. "But these are isolated incidents. It is nothing to do with any instruction from above."

He said there was a warrant for the policeman's arrest.

An eight-party opposition coalition called Medrek, which includes the OPC, called Wednesday for a rerun of the election and said it would not be deterred by the ruling party's desire to have a single-party state.

"In spite of all the sacrifices paid, both by the nation and by the respective parties, this election simply does not pass the test so we are calling for a rerun of the whole election in the presence of independent election administrators and observers," said Beyene Petros, the chairman of Medrek.

EPRDF DRAMA

"This election -- let me take that word back, this activity -- that took place on May 23, we don't consider it a genuine election but rather a drama acted by the EPRDF," he told a news conference in the capital Addis Ababa.

Medrek has won only one seat in parliament so far.

The country's second biggest opposition party, the All Ethiopian Unity Organization, also rejected the result of the elections and called Wednesday for a rerun.

A European Union observer mission said the election was marred by the EPRDF's use of state resources for campaigning, putting the opposition at a disadvantage ahead of the vote, but this did not mean the count itself was invalid.

The United States said Ethiopia's election failed to meet international standards and called for stronger democratic institutions in the country, a key U.S. ally in Africa.

Western diplomats are watching closely to see how the opposition will react after many of its senior leaders lost their seats in the parliamentary victory for Meles, who is looking to foreign investors to help accelerate development.

At the last election, an opposition coalition cried foul after the EPRDF and its allies won 327 seats. Riots erupted in the capital on two separate occasions. Security forces killed 193 protesters and seven policemen died.

Oromia is home to the Oroma, Ethiopia's biggest ethnic group with 27 million out of 80 million people. The area produces most of the coffee in Africa's biggest grower, along with oil seeds, sesame and livestock, which are major exports.

Oromo had been seen by analysts as an opposition stronghold but the EPRDF won all 178 of the region's parliamentary seats.

Oromo politicians said the government was cracking down on them ahead of the poll. Both the government and the opposition said members were murdered in Oromia by the other side in the four weeks leading up to the May 23 poll.

"The vote is 100 percent controlled by the ruling party," Hailu said.

MAKELLE, Ethiopia (Reuters) - An explosion at a cafe in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray killed five people Saturday and wounded 20 others, officials said, blaming the attack on neighboring Eritrea.

A Vatican clergy blessing the Italian Fascist army.

The repeated appeals to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to express the Vatican’s apology to the Ethiopian people for its complicity with the Fascists in the perpetration of the crime of genocide in Ethiopia have so far gone completely unheeded. Letters of appeal written directly to His Holiness’ office, the Vatican Embassy in Washington, DC as well as through the media including the internet have so far been ignored. As an example, I can mention my letter dated August 18, 2005 to His Holiness soon after his selection as a Pope and his visit to a synagogue in Cologne, Germany where he expressed his apology to the Jewish people for the “unimaginable crime” of holocaust committed against them by the Nazis. For more details, please check: www.globalallianceforethiopia.org.

While Pope Benedict XVI is recognized for his prompt response to issues such as his travel to Turkey following his controversial remarks regarding Islam, his apology to the Jews, and his reaction regarding the alleged crime committed by pedophile clergy, it is a matter of a great concern that His Holiness has chosen, so far, not to own up to the Vatican’s complicity with the Fascist crime, during 1935-41, which resulted in the murder of one million Ethiopians as well as the destruction of 2000 churches, 525,000 homes, and 14 million animals. Could it be because Ethiopia is a poor African country?

It is a matter of a historic fact that the Fascist army had the Vatican’s blessing when it proceeded on its murderous journey to Ethiopia where it committed the horrendous crime by using various weapons of mass destruction including poison gas which was made to rain in rural and urban areas throughout the country.

Pope Benedict XVI must be fully aware of the Vatican’s complicity in the Fascist crime of genocide in Ethiopia. He must know that when the Fascist army managed to reach Addis Ababa, the then head of the Vatican, Pope Pius XI had expressed his joy, on May 12, 1936, by stating:

“The triumphant joy of an entire, great and good people over a place which, it is hoped and intended, will be an effective contribution and prelude to the true place in Europe and the World.”

According to Avro Manhattan, the Pope’s joy was expressed in a more cogent and graphic declaration by the Archbishop of Toreno with the following words:

“The war against Ethiopia should be considered as a holy war, a crusade” (as Italian victory would) “open Ethiopia, a country of infidels and schismatics, to the expansion of the Catholic Faith.”

With the heroic struggle by Ethiopian patriots as well as the support of friendly countries such as the United Kingdom, Ethiopia was liberated from Fascist Italy’s occupation in a short period of five years. However, to this day Ethiopians are still awaiting the required apology by the Vatican and an adequate compensation by the Italian government.

With regard to compensation, it should be recalled that recently the Italian government has consented to compensate Libya (a country that was also a victim of colonization) with $5 billion for having used 30,000 of its citizens in the fascist invasion of Ethiopia. It is, therefore, obvious that the miniscule amount of 6 million sterling pounds that was alleged to have been a compensation for Ethiopia could not, by any wild imagination, be considered sufficient! After all, if $5 billion dollars were paid for the military deployment of Libyan citizens in the unjust attack against Ethiopia, the murder of one million Ethiopian people should have more serious consequences.

As if to add insult to injury, the Vatican is in the process of beatifying Pope Pius XII, a person who is known to have masterminded the fullest support to Fascist Mussolini, to sainthood. The Vatican is also still proceeding with its age old policy of promoting Catholicism in Ethiopia, an attempt that was the cause of a devastating loss of life during the reign of Emperor Susneyos, as it is in the process of establishing a Catholic university in Addis Ababa.

The Vatican has apologized to the Jewish people repeatedly for having been silent during the Nazi holocaust. If silence were enough reason to apologize, would being complicit in the Fascist crime against Ethiopia not be a much stronger reason for a sincere apology to the Ethiopian people?

It is extremely important for the Vatican to take such an action as it would pave the way for other required measures that would be needed from the UN as well as the Italian government. Therefore, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI is called upon to do his Christian duty by expressing the long awaited Vatican apology to the Ethiopian people thereby putting to rest the open wound that has festered for generations.

Photo: AP

A member of Hezbollah's youth movement, the Mahdi Scouts, throws flowers tributes into the sea in memory of the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 plane that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on 25 Jan 2010, south of Beirut, Lebanon, 2 Feb 2010 (file photo)

Ethiopian Airlines officials are closely following a report that a captured terrorism suspect has told of a bomb aboard a plane that crashed off the coast of Lebanon in January. Investigators have not determined the cause more than two months after the crash.

A report on a U.S. Internet Web site says British intelligence agents have reopened their investigation into the mysterious crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet January 25. The Boeing 737 plunged into the Mediterranean Sea minutes after takeoff from Beirut airport, killing all 90 people aboard.

News reports initially quoted witnesses as saying the plane had broken up in the air and fallen into the sea in a ball of flames. But Lebanese officials immediately ruled out terrorism, and suggested pilot error was to blame.

The "G2 Bulletin" Web site, which calls itself an independent online intelligence newsletter reports an operative of the group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula told interrogators the aircraft was destroyed by a suicide bomber trained in Yemen.

The operative is said to be among more than 100 terrorism suspects recently arrested in Saudi Arabia. He is reported to have told his captors the Beirut bomber trained in the same camp as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to set off a bomb in his underwear on a plane landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

Ethiopian Airlines chief Girma Wake has been critical of what he called premature and misleading speculation about the cause of the Beirut crash. In a telephone interview, he cautioned that this latest report must be checked thoroughly. But he said it raises questions about why Lebanese politicians were so quick to rule out foul play and blame pilot error.

"The very fact the Lebanese authorities were saying the aircraft exploded in the air, or when they say there was a trace of fire as it was coming down. All this leads you to check it. I'm not saying that is the cause, but it leads you to check this," said Girma.

Girma declined to say what he thinks the cause may have been. He said, 'if you rush to conclusions, they will be the wrong conclusions.'

News reports from Saudi Arabia say the recently arrested terrorism suspects were part of a network of al-Qaida-affiliated radicals that included two suicide bombing cells.

Mahboub Maalim, head of the six-nation East African regional economic group known as IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development), says al-Qaida-linked terror cells in the Arabian Peninsula are working with like-minded groups in the Horn of Africa.

"We're almost certain in Somalia the group al-Shabab is not a Somali group any more, and we think a lot of other nationalities are there in the name of that cell, the al-Qaida cell, and definitely we feel there is also a link with the group in Yemen," note Maalim.

A statement from the Saudi interior ministry last week said the recently arrested terrorism suspects were plotting attacks on oil and security installations. Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil exporter.

There has been little speculation about any terrorism motive in connection with the Ethiopian Airlines crash. But experts have noted that the crash occurred almost exactly five years after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, after whom Beirut's airport is named.

A Special Tribunal into the Hariri killing is reported nearing a conclusion that would bring the perpetrators to justice. An earlier United Nations backed probe said it had found evidence implicating senior officials of the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services.

Bob Geldof is furious with the BBC for reporting that his charity unwittingly funded weapons for warlords. So what's the truth? Here Band Aid's man in Ethiopia tells his disturbing story.

The images of starving children flickered across the screen  -  youngsters hardly conscious, possessing not even the energy to bat away the flies descending on their emaciated bodies. 

BBC broadcaster Michael Buerk described the scene in Ethiopia 1984 as 'the closest thing you get to hell on earth'. The famine pictures awoke the conscience of the world. A year later, Britain was host to the biggest fund-raising event of all time, Live Aid.

Who can forget it? At Wembley, and in Philadelphia, pop stars including Queen, David Bowie and George Michael were part of a dazzling line-up determined to feed the world. 

Full of hope: Midge Ure and Bob Geldof at Live Aid in 1985

And Bob Geldof demanded: 'Don't go to the pub tonight  -  please, stay in and give us the money. There are people dying NOW, so give me the money.'

Money poured in. The 16-hour rock concert on July 13, 1985 raised around £65million and was watched by a global audience estimated at 1.5 billion.

It was a moment of hope. But that was then. 

Now the BBC has reported that substantial amounts of money  -  some of it raised by Band Aid  -  were siphoned away from relief efforts and went to fund guns for Ethiopian warlords during the Eighties.

Bob Geldof has responded with a vitriolic attack, dismissing the story as 'total b******s' and accusing the BBC of a 'total collapse of standards'. He has branded the BBC World Service a 'rotten old cherry'.

He said: 'Produce one shred of evidence, one iota of evidence, and I promise you I will professionally investigate it, and I will sue the Ethiopian government, who were the rebels at the time, if there is any money missing, for that money back now.'

He added: 'Let me be specific. There is not a single shred of evidence that Band-Aid money was diverted. It could not have been.'

So just what is the truth? And where did the money raised by Band Aid go?

Today, for the first time, the Band Aid man on the ground in Ethiopia speaks out exclusively to The Daily Mail, saying he believes it is possible that up to 20 per cent of donor's money went to fund the rebels.

Furthermore, he told me that he personally sympathised with the rebel cause he calls 'a liberating force', and travelled in convoys he suspected were transporting arms to them.

John James was Band Aid Field Director in Ethiopia from 1985-91 and was awarded an MBE for his charity work. He says: 'I would be surprised if it were any less than 10-20 per cent of funds were diverted to the rebels.

'Did I sympathise with the rebels? Yes. We would not have tolerated any direct assistance in the purchase of arms or condoned it, but just remember it was a highly complex situation.'

James, a farmer who is now 85 and living in Devon, adds: 'I think it is ridiculous for anybody to claim that not one penny of aid money was diverted.

'You couldn't help the hungry in the rebel-held areas without helping the rebels. You have to be realistic about that. It is probable that some money was diverted to buy arms. I believe a just use was made of the money. I think it fulfilled the interests of the donors.'

He recalls travelling on a rebel convoy, which he suspected carried arms, saying: 'I didn't know what was in the heavily sheeted tarpaulin load of the lorry in which I travelled, and I didn't ask. I would be surprised if it had not contained arms.' 

Aid money: Was Max Perberdy fooled by Gebremedhin Araya and Tekleweyni Assefa?

To understand just how explosive his recollections are, let us turn to the BBC report that unleashed Geldof's temper, and caused ripples of alarm to reverberate around the world of charity fundraising.

Former rebel leaders told the World Service's respected Africa editor, Martin Plaut, that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money.

They say that their organisation, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) used the cash, meant to pay for food for the starving, to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time in a bloody civil war.

One rebel, Gebremedhin Araya, estimated that $95 million (£63m) of aid money from Western governments and charities, including Band Aid, was spent on weapons and the political machinery of the rebel party. He believed just $5 million (£3m) was used to help locals.

James agrees with Araya that some money found its way into the rebel's hands  -  but denies it was the $95 million quoted. He believes that there is a 'strong probability' that five to ten per cent of funds was diverted for arms by the TPLF, and a further five to ten per cent used by them to finance their political 'hearts and minds' campaign  -  totalling up to 20 per cent.

If this is the case, by his own estimation, about $2m of aid money was misused.

So just how did Band-Aid money, given in such a wave of goodwill, come to fund guns?

At the time, the Ethiopian government was fighting rebellions in the northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigray.

It was the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union, aided by Libya, poured $4billion into Ethiopia, sending 600 T-62 battle tanks to help the government fight rebels. 

Dozens of giant Antonov An-22 military transport aircraft arrived, delivering a mighty war-chest of fire-power.

The communist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam  -  later found guilty of genocide  -  embarked on The Red Terror in 1977. He burnt rebel villages, and thousands were herded into churches which were set alight in appalling scenes of brutality.

Women were systematically raped, and the streets of the capital Addis Ababa were littered with the corpses of hundreds of child victims.

The rebels fought on  -  but they were out-gunned. They were kitted out with old Italian World War II machinery.

Then came the famine and huge amounts of Western aid arrived. Much of the countryside, where it was needed, was under rebel control. Some was in the form of food, some as cash.

Max Peberdy, a charity worker from Christian Aid, carried nearly $500,000 in Ethiopian currency across the border in 1984, which he used to buy grain from merchants. His story is central to the BBC claims. He insists the money he carried fed the starving.

But the merchant Peberdy dealt with was Gebremedhin Araya  -  who claims he was, in fact, a senior member of the rebel TPLF.

'I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a trick for the aid workers,' says Araya.

Taking advantage of the fact that the aid workers conducted just a random sampling of the grain bags purchased, Araya placed sacks filled with sand under the grain. He says he handed over the money to his leaders, including Meles Zenawi  -  now Ethiopia's prime minister. Zenawi refuses to comment.

Former TPLF commander Aregawi Berhe supports Gebremedhin's version of events. Now living in exile in the Netherlands, he says the rebels put on a 'drama' to get the money. 'The aid workers were fooled,' he says.

A candid black and white photograph from the time has come to light, graphically showing the set-up.

There is Peberdy  -  the cliche of the sandal-wearing foreign aid worker  -  opening a satchel full of Western cash, which is being counted by Araya and Tekleweyni Assefa, director of the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)  -  a group which was, in effect, run by the rebels.

BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar worked in Ethiopia in the early Nineties. He confirms the situation: 'REST was undeniably the humanitarian wing of the rebel movement. Of that, there is no doubt.

'The relief agencies had no way of knowing whether the official buying grain for them from REST was an independent local aid worker, or a member of the rebel group posing as one. The TPLF is the most ruthlessly organised and efficient guerilla group I have ever encountered.'

The BBC says that Band Aid's accounts show that it gave almost $11million to the society and other groups close to the rebels. 

In response to questions from the Daily Mail, a spokesman for the Band Aid Trust said: 'Grants totalling $7,207,723 were provided to REST between 1985 and 1991.'

The CIA, in a 1985 report, also alleged aid money was being misused and 'diverted for military purposes'.

Plaut, who reported from Africa in 1985, spent almost a year researching the documentary, and the BBC is standing by his report.

For its part, the Band-Aid Trust has said it will report the BBC World Service to Ofcom and the BBC board of directors.

Surely, then, they are keen to disprove the allegations. On the contrary, when approached by the Daily Mail, The Band-Aid Trust proved extremely reluctant to hand over its accounts.

Charity Commission regulations require them to keep accounts for only six years.

Eventually, the Trust passed on accounts dating back to 1995. The files for the previous decades are archived, they say, and not available for some time. They could perhaps then be viewed  -  at a cost.

After much probing, some further figures are released by accountant Joe Cannon, with a message: 'Please note that there will be professional time costs for extracting the relevant information and responding to your emails, which will need to be recharged to the Daily Mail. We will forward full details of these costs to you in due course.'

In fact, the Trust proves elusive on every point  -  it does not have an office, questions have to be put, through its accountants, in writing to the trustees, who will decide if they deign to reply.

They do not reply. Hardly the transparency expected of a major UK charity.

After the extraordinary success of Band Aid, Geldof pledged to spend 20 per cent of the money on emergency relief, 20 per cent on logistics, and 60 per cent on long-term development.

Around £43 million was spent in the first year. Despite scrutiny and the efforts of charity workers in the field, it would have been impossible to account for every pound. In the years up to 1992, some £100 million was raised and spent.

So just what do the accounts show since 1995? Band Aid has made a large number of grants to different organisations. Its stated aim is the relief of hunger and poverty in Ethiopia and the surrounding area.

In 1995, it gave £231,808 to SOS Sahel, a development agency that works with herders and farmers in Africa.

The following year, Farm Africa received £25,000 and Oxfam £100,000. In the years to date, grants of up to £500,000 have been made to charities including Christian Relief & Development Association (an Ethiopian charity), UNICEF, Sudanese Relief and Water Aid. A total of £75million was handed out up to 2004. 

Towards the 20th anniversary of the concert, Band Aid experienced something of a renaissance. The charity set up a trading subsidiary Woodcharm Limited, to handle royalties from a re-released DVD of the concert, and an auction of signed instruments donated by Band-Aid members. 

Now, however, the charity is under fire. The aid agency world is understandably upset at the row  -  not least because tales of aid money paying for arms could cause donations to decline. 

'If we were being conned, I think it was on a very small scale,' said Stephen King, who oversaw charity work in the region at the time. 

Peberdy categorically denies being tricked, saying: 'We routinely monitored the trucks shipping aid across the border. The claim made by Araya is frankly absurd.' 

Penny Jenden, director of Band Aid at the time, backs up Peberdy's statement. 'If this money had been diverted to rebels and not used to buy food you would have had thousands of people lying dead at the side of the road. The fact that there was no major death toll clearly demonstrates that the money was not diverted.' 

Christian Aid has also refuted the allegations. 

Others disagree, however. Richard Dowden, former Africa Correspondent for The Economist and director of the Royal African Society, tells me: 'I would be astounded if some of the money had not been used by the rebels. That is what happens in these situations'. 

Indeed, the UN reported last week that up to 50 per cent of food aid in neighbouring Somalia is being stolen.

Perhaps, then it would have been wiser for Geldof to have been more measured in his response to the claims. 

He has now tellingly conceded in a radio interview  -  which was very small print compared to the ferocity of his initial outburst: 'It's possible, in a war zone, in one of the worst wars, the longest-running wars in the 20th century, in a famine area, it's possible of course, that some monies were mislaid.'

David Anderson, Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford, says that it is naive to claim no money was diverted by warlords.

'You can't work in a warzone without some risk that you are giving money to some of the bad guys,' he says.

He believes Geldof was upset because news reports of the BBC programme have made it sound as if 95 per cent of money raised by Band Aid was diverted by rebels.

'Of course, that is not true,' he says. 'The programme claims a proportion of the money going into a small area of Ethiopia was diverted to buy arms. They claim that as much as £7million went astray. 

'That sounds a lot, but it is a tiny proportion of the total amount of aid that went into the region.' 

He adds: 'Some of the Band-Aid money will have been siphoned off, and we will never know how much went missing. That much we know.' 

Now, John James has brought us far closer to knowing the truth. Whether Bob Geldof will eat his hat  -  and keep his promise to sue the Ethiopian government  -  is another matter. 

Mr Zenawi said Ethiopia had been testing the jamming equipment

Ethiopia has admitted it is jamming the Voice of America's (VOA) broadcasts in Amharic, accusing the radio station of engaging in "destabilising propaganda".

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Ethiopia had been testing jamming equipment, although there had been no formal decision to bloc the US station.

The Amharic Service has experienced interference since late February.

Mr Meles also compared the VOA's transmissions to broadcasts in Rwanda in the mid-1990s that incited genocide.

'Unfortunate' comments

"We have for some time now been trying to beef up our capacity to deal with this, including... jamming," Mr Meles said on Thursday.

In a statement, VOA director Danforth Austin said that any comparison of VOA programming to Rwandan broadcasts inciting genocide in the 1990s was "incorrect and unfortunate".

"The VOA deplores jamming as a form of media censorship wherever it may occur," he said, adding that the station's Amharic Service was required by law to provide accurate and objective information.

The VOA and other foreign media organisations say broadcasts in Amharic - the country's most widely spoken language - have been jammed around elections in the past.

The next polls in Ethiopia are in May and human rights groups say there has been a crackdown on the press.

The last elections saw opposition accusations of widespread rigging.

Thousands of opposition supporters were arrested after protests and some western countries reduced aid to Ethiopia.

Separately, Mr Meles again denied claims in a recent BBC report that he had ordered the diversion of food aid money to buy arms to fight the government in the 1980s.

"We did not need to [do it]. We were not short of ammunition or arms. That was never our problem. Our main problem was that we were operating in an environmentally very fragile area unable to feed itself," he said.

Mr Zenawi said Ethiopia had been testing the jamming equipment

Ethiopia has admitted it is jamming the Voice of America's (VOA) broadcasts in Amharic, accusing the radio station of engaging in "destabilising propaganda".

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Ethiopia had been testing jamming equipment, although there had been no formal decision to bloc the US station.

The Amharic Service has experienced interference since late February.

Mr Meles also compared the VOA's transmissions to broadcasts in Rwanda in the mid-1990s that incited genocide.

'Unfortunate' comments

"We have for some time now been trying to beef up our capacity to deal with this, including... jamming," Mr Meles said on Thursday.

In a statement, VOA director Danforth Austin said that any comparison of VOA programming to Rwandan broadcasts inciting genocide in the 1990s was "incorrect and unfortunate".

"The VOA deplores jamming as a form of media censorship wherever it may occur," he said, adding that the station's Amharic Service was required by law to provide accurate and objective information.

The VOA and other foreign media organisations say broadcasts in Amharic - the country's most widely spoken language - have been jammed around elections in the past.

The next polls in Ethiopia are in May and human rights groups say there has been a crackdown on the press.

The last elections saw opposition accusations of widespread rigging.

Thousands of opposition supporters were arrested after protests and some western countries reduced aid to Ethiopia.

Separately, Mr Meles again denied claims in a recent BBC report that he had ordered the diversion of food aid money to buy arms to fight the government in the 1980s.

"We did not need to [do it]. We were not short of ammunition or arms. That was never our problem. Our main problem was that we were operating in an environmentally very fragile area unable to feed itself," he said.