Sahle Tsegazeab, also known as Wedi Itay, a civil servant and freelance journalist, 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, Sahle’s 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. CPJ has been unable to confirm reports that Sahle died in custody and retains his name on the prison census to hold the government accountable for his fate.
Sahle was a civil servant in Eritrea’s attorney general’s office who contributed articles to newspapers, including the state-owned Haddas Ertra and later, under the pen name Wedi Itay, to the privately owned Zemen.
Sahle began writing for Zemen after Haddas Ertra started censoring his pieces on “Eritrea’s deferred national dreams,” Abraham Zere, the then-executive director of the international free speech organization PEN Eritrea, told CPJ in 2018. Abraham said Sahle’s critical articles were widely read during the period of heightened political tension.
Abraham told CPJ that state security officers summoned Sahle in October 2001, a few days before a planned trip to South Africa for postgraduate studies.
Daniel Mekonnen, head of the Eritrean Law Society in exile, wrote in a 2004 article for the Eritrea Human Rights Electronic Archive website, which documents abuses against Eritreans, that he was also part of the cohort of students slated to travel to South Africa. Daniel, a former judge in Eritrea, said he last saw Sahle in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, in late October and only realized that his friend had disappeared when he failed to join the departing group at the airport on November 1. Daniel described Sahle as a “strong proponent of good governance” who paid a price for his writing.
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 — including Sahle who is believed to have died from lack of medical treatment in the northeastern Eiraeiro prison camp. 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.