While Ethiopia’s government is blaming the insurgent Oromo Liberation Army for last month’s shooting death of a popular singer, which sparked days of violent unrest, the OLA’s commander denies any responsibility and says the administration itself is culpable.

“Our struggle is to create a country where people can speak freely. We don’t kill people because they speak their mind,” Kumsa Diriba, commonly known as Jaal Maro, told VOA’s Horn of Africa service in a phone interview Wednesday.

Hachalu Hundessa was fatally shot June 29 in a suburb of the capital, Addis Ababa. The 34-year-old activist singer’s music had served as a soundtrack to anti-government protests that helped bring Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to power in April 2018. He belonged to the Oromo ethnic group, Ethiopia’s largest, which has pressed for self-rule of the country’s vast Oromia state and for establishing Afaan Oromo as the national language.

In announcing the arrests of three suspects last week, Attorney General Adanech Abebe blamed Hachalu’s killing on the OLA, an armed faction that broke away from the Oromo Liberation Front in 2018. In a phone interview Monday, she told VOA that the suspects confessed to being directly ordered by the OLA to kill the singer to foment violence between ethnic groups — in this case, Oromos and Amharas.

“We found death threat text and voice messages on Hachalu’s cellphone that came from a person who describes himself as a member of OLA/Shene,” Adanech said, using the government’s name for the group. “A woman who was with Hachalu at the time of his death also identified the killer.”

The OLA has battled with Ethiopia’s military in Western Oromia for the last two years. The Abiy administration accuses the insurgent group of attacking and killing civilians in Oromia and Southern Nations.