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ERITREA

Sweden ‘legally bound’ to seek Dawit Isaak release

Lawyers and activists argued on Monday that Sweden and the EU are legally bound to work harder to secure the release of Dawit Isaak, an Eritrean-Swedish journalist who has been held in Asmara for nearly a decade without trial.

Sweden 'legally bound' to seek Dawit Isaak release

“In our opinion, Sweden and the EU have not lived up to their obligation to use all possible legal and diplomatic means to protect the basic human rights of Swedish citizen and EU citizen Dawit Isaak,” Percy Bratt of Swedish law firm Bratt & Feinsilber told reporters in Stockholm.

Along with the jailed Swedish-Eritrean journalist’s brother, Esayas Isaak, and the Swedish chapter of Reporters without Borders, the law firm on Monday presented a legal motion and a letter to the Swedish foreign ministry stressing its legal obligations in the case.

They were scheduled to present a similar petition to the European Union parliament in Brussels on Tuesday.

Isaak was arrested in September 2001 along with a dozen newspaper owners,

editors and journalists accused of being Ethiopian spies.

Eritrea fought a 30-year independence war with Ethiopia that ended in 1991 although tensions erupted into a two-and-a-half year border conflict in 1998.

Isaak’s friends and family have had no contact with him for years and it remains unclear where he is being held, although Swedish media quoted a former guard earlier this year saying the journalist was at the high-security Eraeiro secret prison near Asmara and appeared to be in poor health.

Media and activists in Sweden and abroad have long demanded Isaak’s release, with several leading dailies in the Scandinavian country listing a daily count of how long Isaak has spent in captivity.

Sweden’s foreign ministry meanwhile has been trying to secure his freedom through diplomatic channels, with so-called “silent diplomacy,” but to no avail.

The legal motion filed Monday stresses that the European Convention not only makes it illegal for a state to violate its citizens’ human rights, but also entails an obligation to ensure that the human rights of its citizens are not violated.

This obligation even stretches to citizens living abroad in countries that are not signatory to the convention, according to the motion, referring to prior rulings by the European Court of Human Rights.

Isaak’s brother Esayas told AFP Monday he hoped the legal motion would help bring about a turning-point in the case.

“I obviously would like to see Sweden put its foot down and find an alternative to this silent diplomacy, because it has not given any results yet, and I don’t know if it ever will,” he said.

Björn Tunbäck with Reporters Without Borders agreed.

“There is nothing wrong with silent diplomacy, but one needs to acknowledge when one reaches the end of the road,” he told AFP.

Sweden and the EU “do not just have a moral but also a legal responsibility. They can’t just keep saying that they’re trying through silent diplomacy. They have an obligation to show that they are trying everything possible,” he said.

Lawyer Bratt pointed out that the EU pays a significant amount of aid money to Eritrea, with no conditions attached regarding Dawit Isaak, which could be used as leverage, while Tunbaeck suggested among other actions that Eritrean leaders’ assets in Europe could be seized and they could be barred from visiting the continent.

Esayas Isaak agreed. “I think money talks in this situation,” he said.

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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.
 
 
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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.”
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