Ethiopia sentences US-based blogger to life imprisonment

Ethiopia has sentenced a US-based journalist Elias Kifle to life imprisonment in absentia, a media lobby has said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Thursday the editor of the Washington-based opposition website Ethiopian Review was convicted on politicised terrorism.

An online  statement from the media lobby;  quoting news reports, further said two other Ethiopian journalists received heavy prison sentences in connection with their coverage of banned opposition groups.

According to CPJ research, Kifle was in 2007 given a life sentence, also in absentia, on charges of treason for his coverage of the government's brutal repression of 2005 post-election protests.

The CPJ statement indicated that a court in the capital, Addis Ababa, sentenced Reeyot Alemu, a columnist with the independent weekly Feteh , and Woubshet  Taye, deputy editor of the now-defunct weekly Awramba Times,   to 14 years in prison and fined them  $1,500, (33,000 birrs).

Banned opposition

"The life sentence for Elias Kifle and the prison sentences for Reeyot Alemu and Woubshet Taye are based on their writings about political dissent. This verdict has little to do with justice," said CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita.

"We condemn this politicised prosecution designed to cow critical voices into silence and call on the Supreme Court to reverse all the convictions."

The three journalists were charged in September with lending support to an underground network of banned opposition groups, which has been criminalised under the country's 2009 antiterrorism law.

Alemu and Taye, explained CPJ,  were arrested in June and held for weeks on government accusations of plotting to sabotage telephone and electricity lines before they were charged.

The global lobby warned that Eskinder Nega, another Ethiopian blogger, who has been imprisoned since September, could be sentenced to death if convicted of similar politicised terrorism charges in connection with his coverage of banned opposition groups.