Ethiopia: Andargachew Tsige spends 1000th day in detention

ESAT News (March 20, 2017)

Ethiopia’s prisoner of conscience, Andargachew Tsige, has now spent 1000 days on Ethiopia’s death row, after the country’s security forces kidnapped and rendered him there in June 2014, Reprieve, an international human rights organization following his case said in a statement.

An Ethiopian born British citizen, Andargachew ‘Andy’ Tsege, a vocal critic of Ethiopia’s ruling party, was taken into custody by Ethiopian regime security while transiting through a Yemeni airport almost three years ago.

Reprieve said Mr. Tsege is being held unlawfully under a death sentence that was handed down in absentia, when he lived in North London with his partner and their three young children.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has failed to secure Mr. Tsege’s return to the UK, despite visiting Ethiopia for the first time as recently as last week.

“It is appalling that Andy Tsege is spending his 1,000th day on death row in Ethiopia, just days after Boris Johnson missed a vital chance to seek his return to the UK. It’s clear there is no justice for Andy in the compromised Ethiopian court system, and it’s hard to see how a lawyer can help him when the Ethiopian regime has said he has no way of appealing his death sentence. It’s time for the UK Government to bring this British father home,” Maya Foa, a director of Reprieve, said.