U.S. authorities arrest Ethiopian torture suspect

U.S. federal agents on Tuesday detained an Ethiopian man suspected of torturing and murdering people when he was a member of a military dictatorship that ruled the African country in the 1970s.

Kelbessa Negewo, aged 54, remains in federal custody and will face a deportation hearing before an immigration judge in the next several weeks, said Ken Smith, special agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He was taken into custody at his home near Atlanta. He faces life in prison in his former homeland, where he was convicted in absentia. He was also the target of a civil case in the early 1990s.

Negewo fled to the United States in 1988 after being released from prison in Ethiopia and eventually became a U.S. citizen. Negewo renounced his citizenship in October after the government moved to strip him of it, and that opened the door for the arrest and deportation proceedings, Smith said. No federal charges are planned against him, he said.