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Who is Hailemedhin Abera Tegegn?

   His close friends described him to HornAffairs as following:

      Hailemedhin Abera Tegegne was born in 1983, now 31   years old. He was born in in Zegie Island, which is found  on Tana Lake, the source of Nile, in western Ethiopia.Hailemedhin was raised in Bahirdar city, on the  offshores  of Lake Tana, at the center of city called “kebel  zero arat”.

        He attended school at Atse Sereke Dingle elementary school, then Bahirdar Secondary School in 2000/01.

Subsequently, he joined Addis Ababa University Architecture department, which he quit to join the state-monopoly Ethiopian Airlines. 

         According to Ethiopian government statement, Hailemedhin was employed in the airline company for the past five years. (There seems to be a few years gap unaccounted for,  given his birth year, period of employment and year of high school graduation – even if we allot two years for pilot training school.)

         Hailemedhin is described by his high school friends as a quiet and reclusive man who rarely enjoyed social gatherings. He was raised by a devotee Orthodox Christians family. Both of his parents are alive and residents of Bahirdar city. His mother is a house-wife while the father is widely-known in the city as being engaged in usury(lending to money with high interest). However, the fact that he was not detained during a recent crackdown on usury triggered a rumor of having a cosy relationship with government officials among Bahirdar residents.

         Most of our sources – acquainted with Hailemedhin – concurred that he was a man of good characters. He – as well as his seven brothers and sisters – are known in Bahirdar city as outstanding students. Two of his sisters are medical doctor and engineer. Hailemedhin is not married but lives with his girlfriend in Addis Ababa – at an apartment nearby Imperial Hotel, in Addis Ababa. His girlfriend is a self-employed lady and running a small internet-cafe, according to one of his friends.

       There was nothing to suggest that Hailemedhin had any prior plan of creating an international incident – according to the conversations he had with his close friends a day before he left Addis Ababa, which I can’t disclose to protect the anonymity of my sources.

                                                                                                      Source: hornaffairs.com