Ethiopia: Free At Last?

ETHIOPIA

Free At Last?

Ethiopia announced plans to close a notorious detention center and release some inmates in what rights workers hailed as an amnesty for at least some of the country’s thousands of political prisoners.

Hailemariam Desalegn, the prime minister, did not explicitly mention political prisoners in his address, however, and some cautioned that it might be too early to celebrate, the New York Times reported.

“He was very equivocal,” the paper quoted Addis Ababa lawyer Yacob Hailemariam as saying.

Ethiopia has never acknowledged that it holds political prisoners. But activists and other critics are often imprisoned under the country’s antiterrorism law or on charges of seeking to overthrow the Constitution, Hailemariam said.

Still, closing Maekelawi prison, a detention center in Addis Ababa, as the prime minister promised, would be symbolic, said Soleyana Gebremichael, the director of the Ethiopia Human Rights Project in Washington.

“Whenever you think of torture, you think of Maekelawi,” Gebremichael said.