SHARE
COPY LINK

ERITREA

Isaak’s alleged crime ‘too serious’ for trial

The Eritrean president’s closest aide has said Swedish citizen Dawit Isaak, imprisoned in the African country for the last nine years, had not yet faced trial because of the “serious nature” of the crime the dictatorial state accuses him of committing.

Isaak’s alleged crime 'too serious' for trial

A journalist originally from Eritrea but with Swedish citizenship, Isaak was arrested in September 2001 along with a dozen newspaper owners, editors and journalists accused of being Ethiopian spies.

“It was a conscious decision from the government not to hold a trial in this case. Anybody who is accused of a crime receives a trial in an Eritrean court. But this is a special case due to the serious nature of the crime,” presidential aide Yemana Gebrab told newspaper Aftonbladet during a visit to Stockholm.

According to Gebrab, the Eritrean government has proof that Dawit Isaak formed part of a group that sought to facilitate an invasion of the country by Ethiopian troops. The president’s advisor added that Eritrea had not presented any evidence to Sweden since it considered Isaak an Eritrean citizen who was bound by the east African country’s laws.

Asked whether Isaak was still alive, Gebrab replied only that “ninety percent of the questions about Eritrea concern this issue.”

Swedish media and rights groups recently called on the EU to halt aid to Eritrea until Isaak and other prisoners are released from a “death camp” near Asmara.

“The EU’s aid to Eritrea must gradually be halted,” said the heads of the Swedish chapters of rights groups like Reporters Without Borders and PEN, along with journalist and publishing associations in a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day.

No aid should be given to Asmara “until the Eraeiro death camp is closed, its prisoners are given medical care … and released or given an open trial on the ‘crimes’ they are suspected of,” they wrote in an opinion piece in the Dagens Nyheter daily.

According to the piece, the EU’s total aid package to Eritrea in coming years totals $413 million.

Their appeal came amid new reports on harsh conditions at the high-security Eraeiro secret prison near Asmara, where Isaak and a number of other reporters and opposition politicians are reportedly being held.

A number of demonstrations were planned across Sweden Monday calling for the release of the reporter, now 45.

“The prisoners are dying one by one. How long will it take before the world reacts and puts pressure on Eritrea to release the political prisoners?” Isaak’s brother Esayas told the TT news agency.

In April, the first information in years pinpointing Isaak’s whereabouts and describing the conditions of his detention emerged in Sweden, before new accounts from a former guard at the Eraeiro prison surfaced in early May.

Isaak “complains all the time, asking for ‘medicine, medicine,’ and all the time asking for help from a doctor … I think he has mental problems,” ex-guard Eyob Bahta Habtemariam told the Expressen daily.

Habtemariam, in hiding in Ethiopia, said he had last seen Isaak on January 5th, right before he himself fled from Eritrea.

He said Isaak was held handcuffed nearly around the clock in solitary confinement in a windowless cell measuring only 12 square metres at the secret prison, some 50 kilometres from Asmara.

The prisoners there, which include former government ministers opposed to President Isaias Afeworki, were not tortured, but according to Habtemariam, the suffocating heat and isolation “was worse than torture”.

“When I started working (at the prison) nine years ago, there were 35 prisoners. Fifteen of them are dead today,” he told Expressen, adding that three of the dead had killed themselves.

“There is a risk (Isaak) will kill himself,” Habtemariam insisted.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ERITREA

Swedish rights group reports Eritrea to police for ‘torture and kidnapping’

Sweden's chapter of Reporters Without Borders has filed a complaint accusing Eritrea's regime of human rights abuses over the imprisonment of Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak in 2001.

Swedish rights group reports Eritrea to police for 'torture and kidnapping'
A sign from a September 2011 demonstration for Dawit Isaak's release
The complaint was directed at Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and seven other high ranking political leaders, including Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed.
   
Handed over to Swedish police by RSF and Isaak's brother, the complaint accused them of “crimes against humanity, enforced disappearance, torture and kidnapping”.
   
It was also signed by human rights advocates like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
   
On September 23, 2001, Isaak was arrested shortly after the Eritrean newspaper he founded, Setit, published articles demanding political reforms.   
 
According to RSF, he and his colleagues detained at the same time are now the journalists who have been imprisoned the longest in the world.
 
 
READ ALSO: 
 
Isaak had fled to Sweden in 1987 during Eritrea's struggle against Ethiopia which eventually led to independence in 1993. He returned in 2001 to help shape the media landscape.
   
RSF ranks Eritrea as the world's third most repressive country when it comes to press freedom, behind North Korea and Turkmenistan.
   
Similar complaints have been filed before, including in 2014 when a new law took effect in Sweden enabling the prosecution for such crimes even if committed elsewhere in the world.
   
The prosecutor-general at the time concluded that while there were grounds to suspect a crime and open an investigation, doing so “would diminish the possibility that Dawit Isaak would be freed.”
   
Bjorn Tunback, coordinator for RSF Sweden's work on the Dawit Isaak case, said they hoped this time would be different after Foreign Minister Ann Linde last year said that despite repeated calls for Isaak's release “no clear changes are yet to be noted in Eritrea.”
   
Tunback said the minister's statements indicated that diplomatic channels had been exhausted.
   
“Diplomacy has its course, but when that doesn't lead anywhere, there is also the legal route,” Tunback told AFP.
   
“The law is there to protect individuals… and that is what we're testing now.”
SHOW COMMENTS