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********** LOCAL POLICE CIRCUMVENT RELEASE OF ETHIOPIAN PROTESTANTS Two Evangelical Leaders Still Jailed after Eight Months by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, December 9 (Compass) — Two evangelical Christian leaders jailed in northern Ethiopia more than eight months ago remain under police detention without charges in Maychew, despite lower court orders to withdraw the case pending against them.

Under apparent pressure, the presiding judge has given local police until December 11 to produce solid evidence against the two church leaders, or she will order them released.

Both elders in local Pentecostal churches, Kiros Meles and Abebayeh Desalegn were arrested in the wake of a two-day rampage last April which left Maychew’s five evangelical churches looted and in shambles at the hands of a mob of Orthodox extremists.

Meles, 46, and Desalegn, 35, were accused by local police as “suspects” in the death of an Orthodox church member, a young man identified only as Haile, shot dead during the last day of the riots. Although the fatal bullet was apparently shot into the air from the local police chief’s gun, and an off-duty policeman was also taken into custody over the incident, the two Pentecostals have been detained without bail during the prolonged murder investigation.

Since Meles’ arrest on April 23, followed by Desalegn’s detention on May 10, the two men have been summoned to court at least eight times, only to have each subsequent hearing postponed. “All the postponements were because the police were trying to cover up their guilt and asked for more time to investigate,” a local source told Compass. Finally, in a court decision handed down on October 29, the presiding judge of a Maychew lower court ordered the case against the two Protestants withdrawn. In her ruling, the magistrate declared there was not sufficient evidence against them to file charges. Accordingly, the two were transferred from prison back to the Maychew police station, where under Ethiopian law they could not be detained for more than 48 hours.

But local police still refused to release Meles and Desalegn, and after a week, moved them back to prison again. “It seems [that] the police are again investigating the possibility of a new charge against them, to be brought before the High Court,” a source confirmed to Compass. “No one dares to confront them.”

At the last hearing on November 29, police told the magistrate they had evidence to prove the men’s guilt and again requested more time for their investigation. The judge declared that she was giving the police 14 more days “only because the High Court is forcing me to do so.” She commented that since the police had failed to produce any proof after eight months, she could not understand how they were going to produce it within two more weeks.

On December 5, Meles’ wife Abeba traveled to Mekele to petition the High Court for resolution of the case. She reported that when a Mekele official telephoned the police in Maychew in her presence to inquire about it, he was told they had “finished the investigation.”

At the next hearing set for December 11, the court must either release the two men or charge them with murder on the basis of solid evidence. “We are very positive and full of hope that they will be released then,” a source said. The policeman, believed by the community at large to have fired the fatal shot, is still being held in the main prison.

According to local church sources, the two jailed evangelical leaders are “still standing strong,” although the pressure placed upon them and their families is “taking a toll.” In late October, the wives of the two jailed men confirmed that they continue to face harassment, with unknown attackers stoning their homes at night, breaking glass windows and doors.

Recently, the prisoners’ families and other members of their congregation have taken on the care and protection of two young men, both convicted thieves, who had met Meles and Desalegn while serving four months in jail on robbery charges. After their release in August, Atkilt Mesfin and Asmelash Mariam were thrown out of their own homes when they declared they had become Pentecostal believers while in jail.

The men told the jailed Protestants’ wives that they had hated and actively persecuted Pentecostals before meeting their husbands, who shared the word of God with them. “My resistance to God started to melt away like salt in water,” Mesfin said, and within a week he put his faith in Christ. “I was totally renewed, and even the life in prison got better,” he said.

According to reports, the detained Protestants have not been physically mistreated while jailed and have been allowed short weekly visits by their families and friends. Although the men’s wives are subjected to a thorough physical search every time they visit the jail to prevent them receiving any letters, they have been able to tell their husbands about dozens of messages coming from Christians around the world who are praying for them.

Despite a moderate stance by prominent leaders of the long-dominant Ethiopian Orthodox Church, some local clerics violently oppose the government’s constitutional guarantees of religious freedom instituted in 1994.

An estimated half of Ethiopia’s population claim Orthodox membership. But since communist rule collapsed in 1991, the nation’s fledgling Protestant community of mostly Pentecostal congregations has mushroomed to some 12 million, nearly 20 percent of the population. Extremist Orthodox elements have denounced these groups as “cults,” with some firebrand priests urging their members to attack them verbally and physically.

In a separate incident in the town of Merawi this past July, Orthodox priests led an attack in which the evangelical pastor of the Full Gospel Church was left to bleed to death from ax wounds to his head.

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Copyright 2002 Compass Direct

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