Swedish-Eritrean journalist sent back to prison in Eritrea

Dec 6, 2005 (NAIROBI) — A journalist who called for press freedom in Eritrea was sent back to prison two days after he was released, an international media watchdog said.

Dawit Isaak, 41, who has dual Swedish and Eritrean nationality, has been imprisoned for four years in Eritrea for advocating press freedom in newspaper articles.

He was unexpectedly released on Nov. 19, but was sent back to prison two days later for unknown reasons, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement late Monday.

The group’s statement quoted an unnamed source and Leif Obrink, a close friend of Isaak’s family who has led an organization in Sweden fighting for the reporter’s release.

“We’re appalled at the Eritrean government’s decision to return Dawit Isaak to jail,” said Ann Cooper, the organization’s executive director. “This only serves to underline the cynical disregard for human rights in Eritrea, Africa’s worst jailer of journalists.”

Isaak went to Sweden in 1987 as a war refugee, but returned to Eritrea in the 1990s to become a reporter at an independent newspaper. He was one of several journalists at the newspaper who were arrested and imprisoned without a trial on Sept. 18, 2001, after demanding press freedom.

Since the Horn of Africa country gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991, President Isaias Afwerki has shelved the country’s constitution, delayed presidential elections, closed down independent media and jailed hundreds of journalists, opponents and members of Eritrean civil society.

(AP/ST)