General Haile “China”
Samuel, Commander of the
Fourth Operations Zone, summoned Mr. Ibrahim Said, Mr. Berhane
Woldehawariat and two other un-named officials and handed them
sentences ranging from four to five years. Since July 2003, the four
officials, who used to be employed by the Port of
Massawa and the
Eritrean Maritime Transport Department, had been held in detention
at the Naval Base prison, one of many legally unauthorized, secret
jails in the country.
Ibrahim Said was the
Director General of Maritime Transport and formerly the Head of
Logistics in the Eritrean Relief and Refugees Commission
(ERREC.) Berhane
Woldehawariat was an administrator at the Port of
Massawa. (See Gedab News: 18 July
2003)
A fifth official,
Mr. Mebrahtu, acting manager of the Eritrean Shipping &
Transit Agency Services (ERSTAS), was also arrested with the group,
but he died in jail allegedly from complications of high blood
pressure. He had been
arrested at the Asmara
Airport upon returning from
Germany where he had
sought medical treatment for his condition.
After their sentence,
the four officials were transferred to Tsetserat Prison in
Asmara, whose inmates are largely
former fighters and veterans of the Eritrean Defence Forces. The
prison authorities in Tsetserat were reluctant to receive the new
inmates, in view of the fact that the prisoners were not accompanied
with documentation indicating their status or verdict. The prison
authorities were then ordered by the Special Task Force (see below)
to take in the prisoners, which they promptly
did.
Todate, no formal
charges have been brought against the detained officials. In 2004, a
three-person Special Task Force, which was formed a year earlier to
investigate alleged irregularities in the Port’s administration, had
made allegations in an Eri-TV program against the officials, without
naming them. It now
transpires that the four officials were, in effect, detained,
investigated, accused, judged and ordered to
be incarcerated by the same three-man Special Task
Force, which has no legal jurisdiction to exercise any of these
powers.
Background:
In 2003, a government
Special Task Force was formed to investigate alleged irregularities
in the Port's administration. The Task Force was composed of Maj.
General Haile Samuel (Chairman), Maj. General Humed
Karekare, who heads the Eritrean Navy and Mr.
Mebrahtu Ma’el, General Manager of Ghedem Construction
Co., a company owned by the ruling PFDJ party. In 2004, the Task
Force made presentations on the state television, Eri- TV. Its “findings” were also
broadcast in the official radio and published on the official
newspapers. The public was informed that the detained port
officials, who were not named in the broadcast, were guilty of
conspiracy with Eritrean private businesses, allowing the latter to
pay custom duties in the local currency, Nakfa, rather than US
Dollars.
The public was exposed
to only one side of the story. The jailed officials, who were
neither given a similar opportunity to tell the public their side of
the story, nor a chance to defend themselves in a court of law,
maintained all along they had been acting within the law. Indeed, no
official directive requiring Eritrean importers to pay customs in
hard currency was ever issued. The only unpublished instructions in
this regard came in mid 2003, when businesses were told to settle
their import duties, retroactively, in US Dollars.1
This should have been sufficient basis to vindicate
the detained Port and Maritime Transport officials. Moreover, the
Task Force had been presented with copies of a letter from the
Ministry of Finance (MOF) permitting Eritrean businesses to pay
customs duties in the national currency (Nakfa).2
However; this was a matter that the Task Force elected not to
address in its TV interview or in any other
occasion.
The institutionalization of the Task Force signals a
step backward compared even to the dreaded Special
Court. The Special
Court, which is presided over by army
officers, does not allow defendants the services of a defence lawyer
and its decisions are final (no right of appeal). Nonetheless, it
entails a degree of formal prosecution: formal charges are brought
against the defendant, court proceedings are conducted (if
oppressive) and verdicts are based on citations from the Penal
and/or Civil Codes. The case of the four Port officials, however, is
one of complete lawlessness: no formal charges, no court, no lawyers
and no appeal.
1 At the time, this led
to an uproar in the business community in Eritrea. Importers were
told they would be refunded their Nakfa and settle (anew) their
import taxes for several years back in US Dollars. Many enterprises
suffered big losses as a result (having had to pay in US dollars
determined at the official rate).
2. Indeed, in their TV
interview, the Task Force members visibly tried to avoid this issue
(of the MOF letter). Mr. Mebrahtu Ma’el unconvincingly touched upon
the issue saying, “some people say that the Port officials had
authorisation to receive the taxes in Nakfa, but this should not
detract from the fact that these people have deprived the country of
hard currency, at a time of dire need. …”. Many Eri-TV viewers, who
had expected revealing findings in view of the advertisements for
the programme that run for several days prior to it broadcast, were
surprised at the sheer shoddiness of the presentation and lack of
evidence.
