The British royal family has refused a request to retrieve and return the remains of an Ethiopian prince taken from his country by British troops in the 19th century.
BBC reports that the body of Prince Alemayehu of Abyssinia will not be returning to the East African country because removing his remains will disturb others buried in the catacombs under Windsor Castle.
That’s according to a spokesperson with Buckingham Palace who released a statement that said, in part, “It is very unlikely that it would be possible to exhume the remains without disturbing the resting place of a substantial number of others in the vicinity.”
Fasil Minas, an Ethiopian royal descendant and relative of Alemayehu, said, “We want his remains back as a family and as Ethiopians because that is not the country he was born in.” Minas added that the prince’s burial in the UK “was not right.”
This most recent rejection is just the latest refusal in a number of calls and petitions Ethiopia has made to salvage the prince’s remains and other relics that were stolen from the country. In 2007, Ethiopia’s former president Girma Wolde-Giorgis sent a formal request to Queen Elizabeth II for the body to be sent back. That request was also denied.
Prince Alemayehu was just 7 years old when he was taken from his home nation by British forces and brought to England after thousands of troops laid siege to the Abyssinian capital and defeated his father, Emperor Tewodros II, in 1868. The nation of Ethiopia had historically been called the Kingdom of Abyssinia by some countries up until the 1940s.
Alemayehu’s kidnapping followed imperial exploits and failed diplomatic efforts of his father who attempted to ally with the United Kingdom in 1862 and petition their help in battling neighboring countries to retain control of his territories.
After sending letters to Queen Victoria with no response, the emperor took some Europeans captive, including a British…
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