Kelbessa Negewo

In 2004 the National Intelligence Reform Act was made into law in the US. It included Senator Patrick Leahy's Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act, which made torture and extrajudicial killings in other countries reason for a person's deportation from the US to that country. Kelbessa was brought to trial in the US again, and voluntarily gave up his American citizenship. A judge ordered him deported, and he was sent back to Ethiopia to serve his life sentence.

He was fired from his job at the hotel, earned a degree in accounting from DeVry University, and remarried, having a son who died in infancy and later a daughter. He became a US citizen on July 28, 1995, after which two of the women who had sued him returned to Atlanta and were taped in a CNN interview. He was tried and convicted in absentia in Ethiopia on murder charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Kelbessa moved to the United States in 1987, arriving in New York City on August 3. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia, progressing from dishwasher to bellhop at the Colony Square Hotel. He was recognized in an elevator at the hotel by an Ethiopian woman, who claims he oversaw her torture while in Ethiopia. She contacted two other women who also identified themselves as his victims, and together they filed a lawsuit under the Alien Tort Claims Act, alleging a violation of their human rights. A judge awarded them US$ 1.5 million in damages, but Kelbessa filed bankruptcy. Shortly after the trial, the Ethiopian special prosecutor tasked with investigating and prosecuting crimes committed during Mengistu's rule asked for Kelbessa's extradition to Ethiopia, which was not granted.

Kelbessa Negewo (born 1950) was an Ethiopian official during the Marxist Derg regime while it was in power. A member of the Oromo people, according to witnesses, he oversaw the torture and murder of political opponents during the Red Terror; Kelbessa denies a role in the torture that occurred. After the fall of the Derg regime, Kelbessa moved to the United States and later gained US citizenship. In Ethiopia, he was tried and convicted in absentia, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was later deported to Ethiopia, where he is currently serving his sentence.

Kelbessa was born in western Ethiopia in 1950, where his family raised goats. Kelbessa claims he was awarded a scholarship to study in the United States, but a government official in Emperor Haile Selassie's regime had his own nephew sent instead in Kelbessa's place.