Buckingham Palace rejects calls to return remains of ‘stolen’ prince to Ethiopia

Prince Alemayehu was taken to England after British forces defeated his father and looted his imperial capital. Ethiopia has been asking for his remains to be returned for 150 years.

“UNITED KINGDOM – MAY 19: Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) of Alamayou (1861-1879), the son of King Theodore of Abyssinia. Alamayou was an orphan who was brought to live in England after his parents died. Cameron’s photographic portraits are considered among the finest in the early history of photography. She set up a private studio at her Isle of Wight home at the age of 48, after her daughter gave her a camera, and she became expert at using the collodion wet-plate process. She used friends, servants and neighbours as subjects, including the scientists John Herschel and Charles Darwin, and the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. (Photo by The Royal Photographic Society Collection / Victoria and Albert Museum, London/Getty Images)” (V&A Images, Royal Photographic Society Collection / Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

LONDON – The body of a teenage prince captured by British troops will not be returned to his remaining family in east Africa, the British royal family has said, in the latest high-profile feud over the legacy of its brutal colonial past.

Buckingham Palace has refused a repeated request to repatriate the remains of Prince Dejatch Alemayehu of Abyssinia — which includes modern-day Ethiopia — who was taken from his home at age 6 in 1868 and died just over a decade later in England.

His body is buried at Windsor Castle, one of King Charles III’s official residences and the traditional site of British royal funerals and weddings.

Alemayehu was taken from Africa after British forces defeated his father and looted his imperial capital, in one of the most notorious military operations of Britain’s colonial era. Ethiopia has been asking for the prince’s remains and other treasures to be returned for the last 150 years.

Read the full report from NBC News.

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