Interview with former prime minister Tamrat Layne. Tamrat Layne was born in 1955 and raised by a single mother in Addis Ababa. He led the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement during the 1980s, fighting against Mengistu Haile Mariam in the Ethiopian Civil War.

In an interview in 1988, he acknowledged that the goals of his movement were similar to that of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, such as its approach to national self-determination and foreign affairs.[1] A self-proclaimed atheist, he believed that “freedom comes out of the barrel of the gun.”