Sunday, October 16, 2011

Journalists to be tried in Ethiopia for terrorism

(October 17, 2011, ADDIS ABABA, AFP)--Two Swedish journalists charged with terrorism in Ethiopia last month will face trial on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, with rights groups already criticising the process.

Photographer Johan Persson and reporter Martin Schibbye, both freelancers, have been held in jail since they were arrested on July 1 with Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels after a battle with government troops. The Swedes were wounded during the gunfight, in which 15 rebels were reportedly killed.

On Sept.7, they were charged with being engaged in terrorist activities, aiding and abetting a terrorist group, and entering the country illegally without permission from neighbouring Somalia.

Sweden’s foreign ministry said Stockholm had not expected the charges of terrorism, but anticipates they will be dropped.

“We were surprised and disappointed by this, because we believe in their claims to be journalists, I can’t see any reason why these charges will not be dropped,” ministry spokesman Andres Jorle told the reporter.

The process has already caused controversy. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper last Monday they are “at the very least messenger boys of a terrorist organisation, they are not journalists.” The comments sparked an angry condemnation from the New York-based media rights watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“The Ethiopian government has compromised their fundamental rights of defence — chiefly, the presumption of innocence — by portraying them in the media as accomplices to terrorists,” the CPJ said in a statement.

The trial also casts rare light on Ethiopia’s south-eastern impoverished Ogaden region, home to ethnic Somalis and the ONLF rebels, who have been fighting for independence from the central government since 1984.

The recent discovery of oil and gas in Ogaden has brought hopes of wealth, but also new sources of conflict, with the ONLF threatening foreign workers and the government cracking down on opposition it says are rebels.

“The Ogaden has become strategically quite important because these resources need to be exploited,” said David Anderson, professor of African politics at Oxford University.
Source: The Gulf Today

Related topics:
Zenawi calls jailed Swedish journalists terror accomplices 
Ethiopia does not want Swedish journalists in sensitive trial  
Swedes to face Ethiopia court next week

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