Ethiopia arrested two opposition members and a lawyer close to the party, accusing them of planning “terror acts”, but one of their lawyers told AFP Wednesday the claims were “baseless”.
The arrests come during a growing crackdown on dissenting voices in the sprawling east African country, which recently re-elected Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a landslide win.
Yisak Wolday, head of public relations for the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), EPRP member Abebe Akalum, and Abera Nigus, a lawyer who has represented several members of the opposition party, were arrested on Monday.
The police charge sheet, seen by AFP, accuses the three of “intent to seize power by force” and said they had “planned and coordinated to carry out terrorist acts”.
The men, who appeared in court in the capital Addis Ababa on Wednesday, are also accused of links to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels and Eritrea, which has a strained relationship with Ethiopia.
“Those accusations are completely false,” Mistresilasie Tamerat, secretary general of the EPRP, told AFP.
“There is no evidence against them; the police just showed media articles to back their accusations,” Mebrihi Brhane, Abera’s lawyer, told AFP.
Mebrihi said the police are expected to present evidence on Thursday, with the court due to decide on Friday whether to grant them bail or to remand them in custody.
“If the suspects are released on bail, they may intimidate, harass, or influence witnesses, destroy evidence, or disrupt our investigative work,” the police said.
The Addis Ababa police spokesperson did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The EPRP had been one of the most vocal critics of Abiy’s Prosperity Party (PP) during campaigning for the June parliamentary elections.
However, the PP claimed a landslide in the recent polls, securing 90 per cent of the seats in parliament’s lower house, while the EPRP — a longstanding party, which resisted the Marxist Derg regime — won no seats.
Home to approximately 130 million people, Ethiopia has been led by Abiy since 2018, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
While he initially showed signs of openness, notably by releasing political prisoners, Abiy’s administration has been criticised by human rights organisations for its repression of dissenting voices.
Press freedom is also increasingly curtailed, with several journalists expelled from the country or forbidden to work in recent months.
Two Ethiopian opposition members, lawyer, accused of ‘terror acts’
