1/19/2024 0 Comments Locked away 2010![]() ![]() True or not, the newest grim report hit friends and families of the journalists very hard. By the government’s accounting, these human beings have disappeared. Hadgo also denied the existence of prisons with such conditions.īut what about the journalists? Are they OK? The spokesman, taking the government’s long-time stance, disavowed any knowledge whatsoever about the imprisoned editors. Emmanuel Hadgo, a public relations officer of the Eritrean Information Ministry denied that Eyob Bahta Habtemariam ever worked for the government and rejected the contents of the interview. Is this information accurate? After all, it’s being broadcast by an opposition station so there is plenty of reason to question both motives and accuracy.ĬPJ called Eritrean officials in Asmara for comment about the allegations. Habtemariam claimed he last saw the prisoners in January of this year, prior to his own escape. According to Habtemariam, the remaining detainees, including Setit co-founder Dawit Isaac, a Swedish citizen who was freed in 2005 but thrown back into prison two days later, are in pitiful physical and mental health. Habtemariam also reported the death of Editor Mattewos Habteab of Meqaleh. A year later, Editor Medhanie Haile of Keste Debena died from lack of medical treatment and Editor Said Abdelkader of Admas committed suicide, he claimed. Extreme heat was responsible, he claimed, for the June 2003 death of Editor Yusuf Mohamed Ali of the now-defunct Tsigenay newspaper. T hey are held in handcuffs and leg irons 24 hours a day and fed one meal a day. ![]() Here’s what else he had to say: Prisoners have never been interrogated or told which crimes they committed. The prison, he claimed, was designed for slow, silent deaths away from public view. Habtemariam went on to say that in 2003 the remaining prisoners were transferred to Eiraeiro maximum-security prison, northeast of Embatkala in a remote desert region. Yohannes was among the editors of now-banned private newspapers who were thrown in prison barely a week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks they were jailed in connection with articles calling on the increasingly authoritarian leader Isaias Afeworki to follow the country’s democratic constitution. Authorities in Asmara declined to confirm or deny the reports. CPJ had already listed Yohannes in its database of journalists killedin the line of duty following unofficial but credible reports of his death. According to Habtemariam, that’s where Fessehaye “Joshua” Yohannes, a co-founder of Setit, once Eritrea’s largest circulation newspaper, and a recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, died in 2003. Habtemariam said he began working at Embatkala prison on September 17, 2001. The account, broadcast by Radio Wegahta, an opposition station based in Eritrea’s archfoe neighbor Ethiopia, came from Eyob Bahta Habtemariam, described as a former supervisory guard at two prisons northeastof the Eritrean capital, Asmara. In the reclusive Red Sea nation of Eritrea, the fate of 10 journalistswho disappeared in secret prisons following a September 2001 government crackdown has been a virtual state secret-only occasionally pierced by shreds of often unverifiable, secondhand information smuggled out of the country by defectors or others fleeing into exile.Īdding to this trickle of information was a grim account last week detailing the supposed deaths of five journalists in government custody and the whereabouts, health, and detention conditions of the others. ![]()
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