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Magistrate releases two jailed Protestants
Church Elders Detention a Shame, Judge Declares
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (07.03.2003)/ HRWF Int. (07.03.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Evangelical church leaders Kiros Meles and Abebayeh Desalegn walked free today after being jailed without charges for 10 months in the northern Ethiopian town of Maychew.
According to the magistrate who ordered their release two days ago, no evidence existed against the two Pentecostal elders, under investigation for alleged murder.
It is a shame for them to be in prison, the judge declared at the March 5 hearing as she ordered the men transferred the same day from prison to the local police station, where they were discharged today.
They have been released this morning and are at their homes, celebrating with all the believers, a source who had spoken with their wives told Compass.
Members of Maychews Protestant community had feared that local police might again ignore the judges order and refuse to release the men once they were transferred back into police custody, as was done in November.
Ethiopia's police force is notorious for misuse of authority and cases of detention without charges are endemic across the country, human rights activists report.
Meles, 46, and Desalegn, 35, were arrested after a two-day riot last April led by a mob of Orthodox church extremists, leaving Maychews five evangelical churches heavily damaged. When a young Orthodox man was shot dead during the last day of the rampage, local police named the two evangelical leaders as suspects in his death. The fatal shot came from the local police chiefs gun, however, and an off-duty policeman accused of firing it was also jailed.
After 14 hearings on their case, local police failed to produce any evidence against the two Maychew evangelicals.
At this moment, a local source admitted, we do not have much hope that the policeman guilty of firing the fatal shots will be charged at all."
Extremists in the majority Orthodox Christian community in Ethiopia have become increasingly hostile toward the newer Protestant movements, which have mushroomed in the past decade. Members of evangelical congregations are often taunted as "Pentes" (Pentecostals), and in several regions their churches have been stoned and copies of their Bibles and hymnbooks set on fire.
Ethiopian police 'tortured Christians'
by Damian Zane
BBC News (17.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (20.01.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Ethiopia's federal police have been accused of illegally detaining hundreds of people following a religious demonstration three weeks ago.
The accusation is contained within a human rights report just released.
The report also alleges that the detainees were subject to torture during their five-day detention.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council says that following a confrontation between the police and demonstrators outside Addis Ababa's Lideta Mariam Orthodox church, 700 people were taken to a police training camp 30km outside the city.
Police silence
The report says that the detainees were neither charged nor allowed contact with a lawyer or a family member.
According to the Ethiopian constitution anyone arrested must be appear in court within 48 hours but most of the 700 prisoners were detained way beyond this deadline.
The federal police have so far not responded to the allegations, though I have been trying to contact them over the past two days.
The report also alleges that some of those arrested were tortured.
Torture
The police told people to take their shoes off and made them run up and down on a stony road.
Some were also told to walk on the road on their knees.
Fully clothed, they were then doused in cold water.
One of the human rights council's investigators showed me pictures of some of the detainees with their knees badly bruised from their ordeal.
At the time of the arrests the police said some of their officers were attacked during the demonstration.
Seven of them were injured, one of them so badly that he was in hospital.
The demonstration three weeks ago was about the Lideta Mariam community resisting the imposition of a church administrator appointed by the office of the Patriarch the head of the orthodox church in Ethiopia.
The dispute between Lideta Mariam and the Patriarch's office has been going on for more than two years and the secular court has decided that Lideta Mariam must accept the appointees.
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