{"id":219717,"date":"2018-05-04T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T16:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?p=219717"},"modified":"2019-02-10T09:35:27","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T14:35:27","slug":"the-assassination-of-ethiopian-dissident-gezahegn-gebremeskel-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/219717","title":{"rendered":"The assassination of Ethiopian dissident Gezahegn Gebremeskel in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zagbo Pascal saw it happen. He was on the corner of Kerk and Polly streets in downtown Johannesburg, hanging out with some friends, when a single gunshot rang out. It was 5pm on Saturday, April 21, still broad daylight, and the streets were busy with foot traffic.<\/p>\n

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This is not the first gunshot to be heard in the area, nor will it be the last. Reflexively, everyone on the street ducked. But one bullet was enough.<\/p>\n

Pascal looked up, and saw a man slumped on the wooden benches outside Yamampela Fast Foods and just across from a discount supermarket. Blood was streaming from his neck. And someone \u2014 \u201ca young boy, slim\u201d \u2014 was sprinting away from the scene, aggressively waving a gun just in case anybody decided to be a hero.<\/p>\n

He disappeared south down Polly Street, presumably into a getaway car and from there straight on to the highway. It was all so quick that Pascal didn\u2019t get a look at the gunman\u2019s face, or even his clothes.<\/p>\n

Soon, a crowd of hundreds had gathered around the body; from the balconies of the flats above, voyeurs craned for a glimpse of the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was horrible. Pitiful. He was lying there with blood coming out of his neck. There was no way we could help him,\u201d said Pascal.<\/p>\n

The police took 40 minutes to arrive, and another two hours to take away the body.<\/p>\n

Pascal and two other witnesses \u2014 a waitress at Yamampela and a vegetable seller across the road \u2014 agree it wasn\u2019t a robbery gone wrong. The dead man\u2019s bag and wallet were left untouched, even though he had two expensive cellphones and R15\u2009000 in cash on him. […] CONTINUE READING<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zagbo Pascal saw it happen. He was on the corner of Kerk and Polly streets in downtown Johannesburg, hanging out with some friends, when a single gunshot rang out. It was 5pm on Saturday, April 21, still broad daylight, and the streets were busy with foot traffic. This is not the first gunshot to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Gezehegn-Nebro.png?fit=919%2C581&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-V9P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219718,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219717\/revisions\/219718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}