SEATTLE, Washington – Political prisoners detained for several months in various parts of Ethiopia are being tortured in solitary confinements beyond the reach of relatives and legal counsels, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
A mother with her four-year-old son and other detainees are being held at the Central Investigation Bureau (known as Maekelawi) in Addis Ababa, and yet none of them has been charged with any offence despite appearing in court, the human rights watchdog said in a press release to Ethiomedia.
Over 60 officials or alleged supporters of the opposition Coalition for Untiy and Democracy Party (CUD) have been held incommunicado since mid-December 2006 or early 2007. Several have been released but there have also been further arrests with some of them being tortured in detention, Amnesty reported.
A mother with her four-year-old son was among several of the detainees who were transfered to Kera Police Station in the Kirkos district of Addis Ababa. The detainees are denied access to family members or lawyers, the human rights defender said. “The detainees are at risk of torture or ill-treatment.”
Amnesty identified Alemayehu Seifu, Tilahun Ayele, Yonas Getachew, Tadesse Zenebe and Gedlu Ayele among those detained at Kera, and said there were fresh evidences that they were beaten by police. The five, who appeared on state television, allegedly confessed that they had ties with the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF), an armed opposition group reportedly operating in northern Ethiopia.
“The authorities have claimed that these detainees had links with an alleged violent conspiracy mounted by the Eritrean government in the unresolved aftermath of the Ethiopia-Eritrea border conflict of 1998-2000,” Amnesty said in its statement.
In a recent statement published on Ethiomedia, a Washington-based CUD support group condemned as a “heinous crime” the act of parading innocent Ethiopian youths on TV alleging that they had links to the Eritrean regime. The attack is on Ethiopians and not on Eritrea the Meles Zenawi regime alleges is fighting against, the statement read in Amharic.
Meanwhile, a police commissioner in Addis said torture was illegal in Ethiopia and the detainees were never ill-treated. However, witnesses said even one of the detainees who appread on state-owend TV had facial injuries.
Amnesty International said the commissioner had wrongly accused it of publishing a fake torture photograph supposedly related to one of the detainees. “It had been posted briefly on a website based outside Ethiopia before it was identified as a photograph from East Timor, but it had never been published or endorsed by Amnesty International.”
Amnesty International fears that some of the detainees may have been arrested in account of their “peaceful activities in support of the CUD, and others on account of statements made as a result of torture or other unsubstantiated evidence of violent opposition.”
BACKGROUND
Seventy-six CUD leaders, journalists and civil society activists are currently on trial for capital charges including treason and armed conspiracy arising from the 2005 elections, which led to demonstrations in June and November 2005 which turned violent. Soldiers and police killed 193 demonstrators and six police officers were killed by mobs. On 23 March the trial judges are due to rule on whether the accused have a case to answer, following the completion of the prosecution case. Most of the accused refused to defend themselves as they did not consider they would receive a fair trial. Amnesty International considers them to be prisoners of conscience who have not used or advocated violence.
