More disturbing news from a former aid darling of the West

Ethiopia, Soviet school

Oct 26th 2006 NAIROBI; From The Economist print edition

THE story is reminiscent of a cold-war spy tale: two diplomats risking everything to smuggle a dissident out of the country with the secret police just one step behind. Except that in today's Ethiopia the secret police proved to be one step ahead and Yalemzewd Bekele, a young human-rights lawyer working for the European Commission office in Addis Ababa, never made it. She was dragged aside by a plainclothes officer at the border with Kenya on October 19th and is now in prison and at risk of torture. The two colleagues from the commission who had taken her to the border were arrested and deported.

Ms Bekele's plight is probably connected to the arrest, on October 5th, of Alemayehu Fantu, a businessman. Mr Fantu was charged with distributing calendars with pictures of imprisoned opposition leaders on them. The calendars called for a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to bring down the government—and seem to have driven the secret police berserk. A student was shot dead for handling them and those suspected of printing and distributing the calendars have been rounded up. Amnesty International, a human-rights pressure-group, is concerned that three of them may already have been tortured to death. Mr Fantu had difficulty walking when he appeared in court on October 12th. Senior diplomats believe he was injured by electric shocks. Read more....