13 FEBRUARY 2005
The Suwera Center hosts a hearing session for the experience of the Sudanese theater artist and performer Mr. Lisan Aldin AlKhatib in An Eritrean prison
The Suwera Center for Human Rights hosted a hearing session at its headquarters in the evening of Thursday February 10, 2005 to listen to the experience of the Sudanese theater performer, Mr. Lisan Aldin AlKhatib, who was imprisoned in Eritrea from April 12, 2002 through October 12, 2004. Mr. AlKhatib spoke about his personal experience in an Eritrean prison where he was jailed without trial or a specific charge of violation. Mr. Lisan Aldin recalls: “I was stopped around 10 O’clock at night at a side street by an individual wearing civilian clothes asking me to get in a car that was parked, and when I asked him about his identity, he said he was a policeman. When I further questioned him, he pulled out a gun and I did not have a choice but to get in the car where I was driven to a prison of (Mar mara) in Asmara . I was imprisoned in a solitary dark cell with a faint lamp that comes on at night only, through which I realize that it was night time as the cell was so dark for being underground. On my first day in prison, around one O’clock in the morning, I heard a woman screaming and a whipping sound, and the screaming kept recurring from other persons throughout the period I spent in this part of the prison.”
“After staying for few days there, I was transferred to another solitary cell that was better than the first one because it had an internal bathroom. They were giving me daily supply of three liters of water for personal use including drinking, washing and bathing. I remained in this cell for four (4) months without any clothes but the ones I had on when I was admitted to the prison. Following that I was transferred to a relatively better division up to the date of my discharge from the prison on October 12, 2004 .”
Mr. Lisan Aldin said that there was a group of Eritrean military personnel in the same prison, where he was, who were captured during the war with Ethiopia and some of them were handicapped. Some of the detainees of this group who spoke to the Ethiopian media during their capture in particular were subjected to punishment and were fined the price of the weapons that were captured by the Ethiopians.
Among the imprisoned was (Twadad) who was detained in 1991 and has been in jail ever since without trial, and Negusse Tsfamariam who has been in prison for over six years. There were many senior citizens in the prison such as the lady who owns the Ambassador Hotel in Asmara and who is in her nineties (did not remember her exact name). She was detained because of her son who escaped and who is accused of commission of financial violations, and an elderly sheikh named Mohamed Jimie Abdul Gader who is in his eighties who has been detained for five years with a charge of allegedly purchasing sugar for a group of Islamic Movement .
There are children and young female in the prison accused with the attempt of crossing the border into Ethiopia or Sudan , and other young female from Ansar Al-Sunna and Sudanese, Yemenis and Ethiopians, as the government considers the belonging to any of these three countries, after the foundation of the Sanaa Alliance, as a charge in itself . Mr. Lisan Aldin said: according to his knowledge there are, besides the official prisons, about twenty six (26) secret prisons, and the number of prisoners in the prison where he was totaled, at some point, to about three thousand persons.
After concluding his presentation, Mr. Lisan Aldin AlKhatib answered the questions of the attendees, and this site will publish very soon the entire presentation.
