The BBC has evidence that millions of dollars, earmarked for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85, went to buy weapons.

BBC有证据显示，埃塞俄比亚将指定用于1984、1985两年饥荒的数百万美元专款用在了武器购买上。

Max Peberdy (middle) says the aid money went to the right causes - but Gebremedhin Araya (left) was posing as an undercover rebel

The investigation¹ found claims that a rebel movement in Ethiopia diverted（转移，释放） the aid to fund its attempt to overthrow²（推翻，打倒） the government of the time.

Rebel soldiers said they posed as merchants as "a trick for the NGOs".

Documents released by the CIA confirmed aid was "almost certainly being diverted for military purposes".

Drought had wiped out crops and an estimated one million people died. Millions were saved by the western aid that poured into（大量流入） the country.

But not all went to its intended destination.

Ethiopia was not just fighting famine（饥荒） , but also rebellions（叛乱，反抗） in the northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigray. Much of the countryside was outside of government control, so relief agencies brought aid in from neighbouring Sudan.

Some was in the form of food, some as cash, to buy grain（粮食，谷物） from Ethiopian farmers in areas that were still in surplus（过剩，盈余） .

Undercover rebels

The photograph above shows one of those cross-border purchases（购买） in 1984.

In the centre sits Max Peberdy, an aid worker from Christian³ Aid, who had carried in nearly $500,000 in Ethiopian currency.

On his journey Mr Peberdy was guarded by 50 young fighters of the rebel movement, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

But he insists he went in with the rebel's relief organisation⁴, Relief Society of Tigray (Rest).

"There had to be a complete separation between the support we got from the TPLF and the logistics of this grain purchasing, which was in the hands of the Rest officials," he said.

On the left sits a merchant, counting out（点数） the money, while a Rest official looks on.

But that "merchant" was in fact Gebremedhin Araya. He insists that he was no merchant, but rather a senior member of the TPLF rebels.

"I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a trick for the NGOs（非政府组织） . They didn't know me."

Underneath⁵ the sacks（麻布袋） of grain he sold, he says, were sacks filled with sand. And he handed over the money he received to TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi - the man who went on to become Ethiopia's prime minister in 1991.