Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia - Societa italiana di storia ...

136 Richard Pankhurst
British and other Allied opposition to the trial of Italians accused of wa r
crimes in Ethiopia was based on the repeated Fo reign Office argument that the
Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935–36, though accompanied by many fascist atro c i t i e s ,
had “no relation” to the European wa r, which had begun in September 1939,
and for which the UN commission had been established. Under British pre s s u re,
the commission accepted this contention and used it to exclude Ethiopia fro m
membership, and hence from raising the issue of Badoglio in its delibera t i o n s .
Ethiopia’s exclusion was, howeve r, inconsistent, in that the British and other
Allies accepted Chinese demands for the trial of Japanese accused of having committed
crimes in China seve ral years before Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia:
Ethiopia lacked the “political clout” wielded by the Chinese.
Despite this weakness, the Ethiopian Government eventually succeeded,
with some skill, in persuading the UN, when drafting the Italian Peace Treaty
of 1947, to accept the principle that it should apply, as far as Ethiopia was concerned,
to the period from the beginning of invasion, on 3 October 1935. The
UN commission was obliged to concur with this date and, though not expanding
its membership to include Ethiopia, agreed that the Ethiopian Government
could submit a short nominal list of war criminals for trial. Though acutely
short of jurists and other trained personnel, the Ethiopian authorities, by then
gravely short of time too, succeeded in drawing up a case, backed up with documentary
evidence and certified affidavits, which the commission accepted,
against ten persons. The UN commission agreed that there was a prima facie
case against eight, and that the remaining two were needed as witnesses.
Logistical and other difficulties, however, obliged the Ethiopian Government
to waive its charge against all but two of the accused, albeit the most important,
Badoglio and Graziani. Their automatic extradition was, however, prevented by
the fact that Ethiopia and Italy had not yet established diplomatic relations. The
Ethiopian Government attempted to overcome this impasse by having its
ambassador in Britain submit a memorandum to the Italian ambassador, but
the latter refused to accept it. Ethiopia, citing provision in the Italian Peace
Treaty, then attempted to use the good offices of the British ambassador in
Rome, but the British Government, anxious to avoid alienating a more powerful
state, refused to comply. Ethiopian efforts to bring to justice those guilty of
war crimes were thus frustrated by intransigence, by both Italy and Britain, and