Kelbessa Negewo - Life in The United States

Life in The United States

Kelbessa moved to the United States in 1987, arriving in New York 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.

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.

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.