Yusuf Mohamed Ali, editor-in-chief of the privately owned Tsigenay newspaper, was arrested on September 23, 2001. He was one of about 13 journalists taken into custody in September and October 2001 in a government crackdown on the independent press.
Like most of those detained in Eritrea, Yusuf’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. CPJ has been unable to confirm reports that Yusuf died in custody and retains his name on the prison census to hold the government accountable for his fate.
Yusuf’s paper was one of several that reported on divisions between reformers and conservatives within the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice and advocated for full implementation of the country’s democratic constitution. Tsigenay was the first publication to publish an interview with the members of this reform movement, according to a 2015 article by the free speech organization PEN Eritrea.
Following the banning of the private press, Yusuf was one of a group of journalists who wrote to the Ministry of Information demanding clarification on the decision, according to a 2009 CPJ blog by Aaron Behrane, former editor of Eritrea’s Setit newspaper, who died in exile in 2021.
Authorities initially detained the journalists at a police station in the capital, Asmara, where they began a hunger strike on March 31, 2002, and smuggled a message out of jail demanding due process. The government responded by transferring them to secret locations without bringing them before a court or publicly registering charges. Several people familiar with the situation told CPJ that the journalists were confined at the northeastern Eiraeiro prison camp or Adi Abeito military prison near Asmara.
Yusuf had been jailed previously. Security forces arrested him on October 14, 2000, for his criticism of the government and the generally critical content of his paper and imprisoned him at Zara Prison in Eritrea’s western lowlands, exiled Eritrean journalists told CPJ.
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 Yusuf. CPJ confirmed in 2007 that one of the journalists, Fesshaye “Joshua” Yohannes, died in secret detention.
In 2006, the Ethiopian pro-government website Aigaforum quoted 14 purported former Eiraeiro guards as reporting the deaths of prisoners, one of whose names closely resembled Yusuf’s. The details could not be independently confirmed, although CPJ sources considered the report to be generally credible.
In 2009, the London-based Eritrean opposition news website Assena published purported death certificates of Yusuf and three others.
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.