The last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, had a great-granddaughter named Yeshi Kassa. She describes the horrendous treatment her family endured during the revolution in a recent documentary. When Kassa discussed the documentary with Insider, she said that the late Queen secretly expressed her approval. When Yeshi Kassa’s great-grandfather, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, was overthrown by a revolt in 1974, she was boarding schooled in the UK. Kassa and her sister did not witness the unrest that broke out in Ethiopia after the coup since they were thousands of miles away in Wales. The emperor was assassinated by Marxist army officers in 1975, and Kassa’s mother and grandmother were among the 12 members of the royal family who were held captive, according to a 1994 article in The Washington Post. Selassie’s fate was first unclear, but in 1994 it was established that he had been killed by being strangled in his bed as those guilty were put on trial, the article continued. Kassa revealed to Insider that she led a tranquil life in exile; she worked as a commodity broker in England before moving to the US with her family after they were released from prison a number of years later. She avoided using a royal title or discussing the atrocities she and her family went through in public. However, in the recently released documentary “Grandpa Was An Emperor,” which was directed by Constance Marks and debuted on streaming services, Kassa analyses the circumstances that led to the dissolution of Ethiopia’s 3,000-year-old royal family for the first time.
