Veteran journalist sentenced to one year imprisonment

ADDIS ABABA – A journalist who had survived the 2005 crackdown that decimated much of the countrys’ independent press was on Friday sent to prison for one year.

Judge Mohammed Omar of the tenth bench of the Federal High Court
sentenced Ezeden Mohammed, editor and publisher of Ethiopia’s
largest Islamic weekly, Hekima, to one year in jail over “incitement” charges.

The court convicted Ezeden Mohammed, whose 14-year span as an
independent journalist is rare after the clampdown in 2005, for
incitement in connection with a 2005 Guardian newspaper interview with
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Ezeden has been imprisoned since Monday morning until the judge
considered the plea for monetary fine by the convicted journalist, and
the stringent demand of the public prosecutor for the maximum prison
sentence under Ethiopia’s old press less, which was recently replaced
by a much harsher new law.

Ezeden now joins two other journalists, Ismael Mohamed, editor of
Ethiopia’s other Islamic newspaper, and Asrat Wedajo, editor of
Ethiopia’s once largest Oromo-centric newspaper, Seife Nebelbal, which
was shut down by the government in 2005.