Bereket Simon was arrested in January 2019 at his residence in the capital Addis Ababa and taken to Bahirdar, capital of the Amhara region, the second largest of Ethiopia’s nine states. He has been in jail since.

He was found guilty on Tuesday. Some of his supporters had said the charges were politically motivated.

He was a powerful figure in Mr Zenawi's administration and was often described as the chief ideologue of the ruling coalition, Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), in power since the early 1990s.

It was a coalition that consisted of the Amhara Democratic Party, the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Southern Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement.

In 2018, his party Amhara Democratic Party ousted him from executive committee membership.

The EPRDF was rebranded and restructured as Prosperity Party under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed without the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).