Police lead Natnael Feleke (center right) and fellow blogger Atnaf Berahane (center left) to court. Photo courtesy of Trial Tracker Blog.
Since they were first arrested and jailed on April 25, 2014, Ethiopia's Zone9 bloggers have seen many twists and turns in their case. All told, they have appeared before the court over 30 times in 16 months, and been adjourned each time. But with the release of five of the detainees in July, the case has reached a critical juncture.
Five Ethiopian writers (four in prison and one in absentia) remained on trial for terror-related crimes that the Ethiopian government claims were committed beginning in May 2012. Endalk Chala, a founding member of the Zone9 blogging collective and Global Voices contributor, walks us through the latest developments in the Zone9 bloggers’ trial before the next court session on Monday, September 7.
How did it begin?
When the bloggers were first arrested on April 25, 2014, they were not allowed to be visited by family members or to have a legal counsel for about three weeks. The never-ending trial of the bloggers started to unfold only four weeks after their arrest. However, during those four weeks friends and families of the bloggers reported seeing the bloggers’ Gmail accounts as logged in. The active green dots of their Gmail accounts alarmed the loved ones of the bloggers, and many suspected that the bloggers had been tortured to disclose the passwords of their Gmail accounts during the prolonged pre-trial investigation phase that took a little over three months overall.
Source: globalvoicesonline
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