February 02, 2009 Posted by Webmaster

COL. YIGZAW ABRAHA

Lt. Colonel Yigzaw Abraha grew up in the town of Nekempte where he completed his primary education. He attended the General Wingate Secondary School and graduated in 1958. He was selected to attend the newly inaugurated Haile Selassie I Military Academy in Harar as a member of the second course, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1961. He graduated from the Para commando training in Debre Zeit with most of his classmates. He then served with the Ethiopian Brigade of the United Nations Forces in the Congo and was stationed in the City of Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi) in Katanga. He was a distinguished member of Special Force assigned to the Eastern Military Command where his outstanding accomplishments are legendary. He served in various capacities in the Ethiopian Army until the infamous Military Junta Derg came to power and thereafter rising to the rank of Lt. Col.
Having witnessed the atrocities committed by the tyrannical regime and sensitive to his own fate, he fled his beloved country and spent several years in the Sudan before settling in the United States of America. Lt. Col. Yigzaw was on a visit to Ethiopia to be with his mother and siblings before he met an untimely death in January 19, 2009. Lt. Col. Yigzaw was an outstanding officer and will be missed by his family and friends. He survived by a son, mother, sister and brother.