Ethiopia Court Requests Detailed Terror Charges Against Bloggers

By William Davison, Bloomberg

An Ethiopian court asked prosecutors to amend charges so they specify the acts of terrorism that 10 bloggers and journalists are alleged to have been plotting, a defense lawyer said.
The order was made Wednesday at the Federal High Court in the capital, Addis Ababa, where nine out of the 10 accused are standing trial for collaborating with a U.S.-based opposition group, Ginbot 7, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Ethiopia’s government.

The charges “simply say these suspects organized themselves and designed terrorism without mentioning what kind of terrorism did they plot as defined under Article 3” of a 2009 anti-terrorism law, Ameha Mekonnen, the defense lawyer, said Wednesday in an interview in Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is the second-worst jailer of journalists in Africa after Eritrea, its neighbor, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The U.S. has said previous convictions contravene freedom of speech rights protected by the constitution. Former newspaper editor Temesgen Desalegn received a 3-year sentence last month for publishing articles deemed to incite ethnic strife and the public to overthrow the government.

The court asked prosecutors to elaborate on the “clandestine” acts and the roles of each of the Zone 9 group bloggers and journalists in plots, Communications Minister Redwan Hussien said by phone today. “They ordered the prosecutor to come up with the clarification,” he said.

Judges on Wednesday rejected a second charge under the 2004 Criminal Code of inciting public revolt because it was covered by the first, Ameha said. The next hearing is on Dec. 3, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa at wdavison3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net Karl Maier, Ben Holland

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