14 Jan. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a guerrilla of the Oromo ethnic group, has reported that it has released some 500 prisoners from the Bule Hora prison, in the Ethiopian region of Oromiya, without official confirmation for the moment.
The OLA has reported that on the night of January 6-7, around midnight, its militiamen attacked the prison and released the prisoners. Five agents of the security forces and no attackers died in the combat, always according to the guerrillas, quoted by the RFI radio station.
The outlet has published a video in which the prisoners can be seen fleeing the place and in which it explains that they attacked the prison because it was a “torture camp” in which there were “random extrajudicial executions”.
A spokesman for the OLA, Odaa Tarbii, has assured that “the door of dialogue is always open”, although he has set as a condition “the release of political prisoners, the mediation of a third party and an independent investigation of the crimes committed in the country “.
The OLA, which split from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) after the 2018 peace agreement and is an ally of the TPLF in the war in Tigray, has claimed responsibility for several attacks –especially in Oromia– in recent months. . The OLF fought for decades for the secession of the Oromia region, but in 2018 it announced that it was giving up the armed struggle, accepting the prime minister’s offer of amnesty.
