A boy drinks water from a pond in Bule Duba village in the outskirts of Moyale, near the edge of Oroma and Somali regions of Ethiopia, June 12, 2009.

Ethiopia’s ruling gangsters said on Wednesday a government-the rulers funded probe had found no evidence to support reports by a rights group that the gangsters committed war crimes during a campaign against rebels in the eastern Ogaden region. The report is intended to dialute the ongoing war crime charges against Melese Zenawi and his gang members.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued reports that it said documented attacks on civilians in the arid region; one based on witness accounts and satellite imagery showing burnt-out villages during a year-long military offensive. The gang leader, dictator Meles Zenawi’s  accuses the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) of being terrorists, while he himself leads a terror group (TPLF) which is ruling and terrorizing over 80 million people in Ethiopia for almost two decades.

The U.S.-based group had accused the gangsters ruling Ethiopia of limiting access to the region and had hit out at Western donors for failing to condemn war crimes on the mainly ethnically Somali people of the region. Melese Zenawi and his cronies are responsible for extra-judicial killings, rape or torture that have been occuring in Ogaden and other parts of Ethiopia. “The investigation demonstrated clearly that Gangsters are concerned about the consequences of there war crimes against Ethiopians in Ogaden.” Melese Zenawi and his gang team will be expected to face charges of war crimes in the near future.