Idris Said, also known as Abba Arre, was a civil servant and newspaper columnist, who was arrested in October 2001. He was one of about 13 journalists taken into custody in September and October 2001 in a government crackdown on the independent press. The exact date of his arrest is unknown.
Like most of those arrested, Idris’ whereabouts, health, and legal status remain unknown as the Eritrean government has repeatedly failed to provide credible answers to questions about imprisoned journalists or to allow visits from family or lawyers.
Idris was arrested in the wake of the government’s sudden ban on the privately owned press on September 18, 2001, in response to growing criticism of President Isaias Afwerki.
At the time of his arrest, Idris worked at Eritrea’s Ministry of Labor and Human Welfare and contributed to the privately owned weekly Tsigenay and the state-owned Arabic newspaper Eritrea Al-Haditha, CPJ was told by several journalists including in 2018 Abraham Zere, the then-executive director of the free speech organization PEN Eritrea.
Journalists initially told CPJ that Idris was arrested over his February 2001 article in Tsigenay which criticized the government’s language policies in education, an archived translation of which has been published by the U.S.-based news website Awate. But PEN Eritrea said in a 2015 article that Idris also drew ire for denouncing the wave of arrests of politicians and journalists in September 2001.
Idris had a severe disability from his time as a fighter with Eritrea’s liberation movement, which won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after decades of conflict, according to PEN Eritrea. Amnesty International said this impairment would likely cause “special problems in detention.”
Over the years, Eritrean officials have offered vague and inconsistent explanations for the arrests — accusing journalists 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 out by people fleeing into exile suggested that seven of the journalists arrested in 2001 have died in custody. CPJ confirmed in 2007 that one of the journalists, Fesshaye “Joshua” Yohannes, died in secret detention.
In a 2016 interview about the journalists and politicians arrested in 2001, Eritrean Foreign Affairs Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed said "all of them are alive" and "in good hands" and would face trial "when the government decides” since some were "political prisoners."
In 2018, Paulos Netabay, director of the state-owned Eritrean News Agency, told CPJ that the journalists’ arrest in 2001 was connected to “acts of subversion and treason by some former politicians” and that the cases had been “submitted and decided by the National Assembly.”
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.