Ethiopia to release high-profile prisoners for national good

Ethiopia government has officially announced its intention to release a number of high-profile prisoners in a sincere attempt to entrench “national good” in the country.

Zinabu Tunu, the Attorney General’s spokesperson, disclosed this in astatement on Tuesday February 25th 2020.

He stated that the prisoners were majorly government critics and high-ranking opposition activists. They were arrested after the June violence that erupted in the north of Ethiopia.

Tunu said that the government had dropped all charges against 63 individual and that they would gain freedom later this week.

“The Ethiopian government hopes to widen the political and democratic space in the country with the freeing,” he said.

Meanwhile, Belete Molla, (NAMA) the National Movement of Amhara Chairman expressed his excitement about the news. He however expressed that they had at first considered the arrest of some of the prisoners to be politically motivated. In addition, the arrest intended to weaken Amhara nationalist spirit.

“We consider their imprisonment a politically motivated act to weaken Amhara nationalism,” he said.

Among those the authorities will release are the Sidama ethnic group activists who had campaigned and voted for autonomy in November.

Also, members and activists of the National Movement of Amhara (NAMA), is on the list. He was a victim of what the government called “regional coup attempt” in a last-year attack on the government.

Another high-profile figure is a former deputy director of Ethiopia’s cyberintelligence agency INSA, Biniam Tewolde, jailed in 2018 on charges of corruptions.