Amnesty International Local Group #489 - Tempe (Phoenix), Arizona An Affiliated Group of Amnesty International USA

The G15 detainees

In response to increasing criticisms and opposition to the President and to the latest G15 letter detailing "obstacles to reform", the security authorities detained 11 members of the group in Asmara on 18 September 2001. Four members escaped arrest: three were out of the country and one withdrew his support for the group.

The 11 were all members of the Central Committee of the PFDJ and had been senior EPLF military or political leaders during the liberation struggle. They included three former Foreign Ministers - Haile Woldetensae, Mahmoud Ahmed Sheriffo (who was later Vice-President) and Petros Solomon, Aster Fissehatsion, a prominent woman EPLF leader, and three army generals. As Central Committee members, they automatically became members of the first National Assembly under the 1997 Constitution and should therefore have enjoyed parliamentary immunity from arrest. The National Assembly, however, declared on 4 February 2002 that "by committing such a crime, defeatism, they have removed themselves from the National Assembly". Some had been co-founders and leading members of the EPLF since the 1970s, subsequently being appointed government ministers following independence, although all had been dismissed from their posts by the time of their arrests.

None of the 11 has been brought to court or formally charged with an offence, although the Constitution and the Penal Code require that detainees should be charged before a court or released within 48 hours of arrest. The maximum period for holding a suspect for investigation is 28 days. No lawyer, however, has dared to bring a habeas corpus action to challenge the detentions and to demand that the authorities produce the detainees in court.

The government said the 11 "had committed crimes against the sovereignty, security and peace of the nation". In February 2002 the National Assembly "strongly condemned them for the crimes they committed against the people and their country". It was claimed that the G15 had committed treason during the war with Ethiopia. Although no death penalty has been carried out in Eritrea since independence, treason is a capital offence.

Amnesty International has carefully considered the government's allegations of treason by the G15, although these have not been formulated as charges or expressed in detail. A specific allegation contained in the National Assembly resolution was that during major military setbacks in May 2000, some of them (unnamed) requested the international peace talks facilitators (the United States and Algeria) to convey an offer to the Ethiopian government to remove the President if Ethiopia would stop its offensive. This has been denied by the leader of the US peace talks facilitators, Professor Antony Lake, who has stated to Amnesty International: "At no point did any Eritrean official ask the American facilitators to become involved in domestic Eritrean affairs or to pass military intelligence to Ethiopia. If they had done so, we would have refused, but they absolutely did not do so."

Amnesty International considers the G15 detainees to be prisoners of conscience who have not advocated violence but were arrested because of their peaceful criticisms of the government. The treason allegations have not been clarified or substantiated. Amnesty International is concerned that the 11 could be detained indefinitely without charge or trial, or unfairly tried. Amnesty International also fears that by being held incommunicado, with no contact with their families or lawyers, and in secret, they are at risk of ill-treatment, including being denied adequate medical care. Some of them have health problems - including diabetes (Haile Woldetensae), asthma (Ogbe Abraha) and ulcers (Aster Fissehatsion) - which could become serious if adequate medical treatment is not provided. There have been various unconfirmed reports about where they might be detained or what their condition is, but the government has said nothing.

In early May 2002 Roma Gebremichael, the wife of one of the G15 detainees, Haile Woldetensae, was arrested. She too has since been detained without charge or trial and incommunicado. She was reportedly arrested for assisting her son, a university student detained in 2001 and subject to national service, to flee the country, and also for her own criticisms of the government. Previously an EPLF fighter, she worked in a bookshop in Asmara. In June 2002 she reportedly became seriously ill in detention and was transferred to hospital under guard.