Ghebrehiwet Keleta, a reporter for the privately owned weekly Tsigenay, was arrested in July 2000. The exact date of his arrest is unknown.
Like most of those detained in Eritrea, Saleh’s whereabouts, health, and legal status remain unknown as the government has repeatedly failed to provide credible answers to questions about imprisoned journalists or to allow visits from family or lawyers.
Security agents arrested Ghebrehiwet while he was on his way to work. Sources told CPJ at the time that Ghebrehiwet was detained in connection with a government crackdown on the media.
Following Ghebrehiwet’s arrest, the government suddenly banned the privately owned press on September 18, 2001, in response to growing criticism of President Isaias Afwerki.
In the weeks that followed, about 13 journalists were taken into custody after several of them wrote to the Ministry of Information demanding clarification on the decision.
Over the years, Eritrean officials have offered vague and inconsistent explanations for the arrests of journalists — accusing them of involvement in anti-state conspiracies in connection with foreign intelligence, skirting military service, and violating press regulations. Officials, at times, even denied that the journalists existed.
Meanwhile, shreds of often unverifiable, second- or third-hand information smuggled by people fleeing into exile suggested that seven journalists arrested in 2001 had died in custody.
In 2010, exiled journalists told CPJ that Ghebrehiwet might have been released. But in 2013, another exiled journalist told CPJ that one of Ghebrehiwet’s children, who had fled Eritrea, said Ghebrehiwet was still in custody. A relative of Ghebrehiwet also told CPJ in 2014 that the journalist remained in prison.
In 2018, Paulos Netabay, director of the state-owned Eritrean News Agency, told CPJ that the arrest of other journalists in 2001 was connected to “subversion and treason by some former politicians” and would be dealt with by parliament but he made no mention of Ghebrehiwet’s case.
In a May 2024 report, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, expressed concern about prolonged, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances and said that the Eritreans arrested in 2001 were the “longest-detained journalists in the world,” imprisoned for almost 23 years without charges or trial.
As of late 2024, CPJ had yet to receive any replies to emails requesting comment from information minister Yemane Ghebremeskel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Justice.