Former Ethiopia Somali Regional State President, Abdi Mohammed Omer, is faced with a trial for inciting violence that plunged the region into deadly chaos in August 2018.

Omer, popularly known as Abdi Illey, has been in federal custody since he was forced out of office last year. He is charged along with over 40 others for similar charges.

Reports shows that only six out of the lot are in detention. The charges were filed at a federal High Court Criminal Bench sitting in the capital, Addis Ababa. The court is due to reconvene on February 6, 2019.

Apart from Abdi Iley, the others charged include: Rahma Mohammed Haybe, former head of women and children’s affairs bureau; Abdulrezak Sehane Elmi, former head of the diaspora affairs office; Ferhan Tahir, former police commissioner commissioner of the region and two private individuals: Worseme Abdi and Guled Abel.

Also the court issued arrest warrants to over 40 other complicit partie who are still at large. They include former head of the region’s notorious paramilitary focre, Liyu Police.

Last week, Ethiopia’s Attorney General hinted that his office had concluded probing into crimes committed in the Somali state, declaring that Abdi Illey and dozens of other officials had plotted to incite a civil war and whiles he had ordered abuses including beheadings.

Abdi Mohammed Omer was arrested after three days of deadly violence in the regional capital Jijiga in August.

Although, Rights groups have routinely reported that his administration had set out to provoke ethnic bloodshed and had ordered a paramilitary force to attack minorities.

The AG’s office said their five-month investigation, had informed the charges laid today but also that 40 other complicit officials were still on the run.

Fifty-eight people died and 266 others were injured during the violence, including a priest set on fire inside a church, the AG’s office said adding that pronouncements by Illey and others encouraging ethnic strife amounted to inciting a civil war.

Abdi Mohammed Omer spent more than 10 years in charge of the remote and largely lawless region on the border with Somalia, much of that time spent trying to crush separatist ONLF rebels.

Rights groups regularly accused his administration of abuses including torture during the fight with insurgents.