Recollections of a Prisoner

Nharnet.com has been presenting to its readers historical accounts related to a few important dates in Eritrean history. As you can read under our listing of historical events for the current month, 12 February 1975 was the date on which units of the Eritrean Liberation Army managed to infiltrate into the Sembel prison near Asmara and the Adi Khualla prison and liberated 1,000 Eritrean prisoners, among them Martyr Woldedawit Temesghen, Haile Woldetensae (Deru’e), who is again in prison today, Seyoum Ogbamichael, the current Chairman of ELF-RC, and many other important patriots in our long-stretched struggle for freedom.

12 February 2005 is the 30^th anniversary of that successful operation that liberated 700 prisoners from Sembel and 300 prisoners from the notorious prison in Adi Khualla.

The event was adequately narrated at its 5^th anniversary in issue No .39 of The Eritrean Newsletter of 1980 in a form of an interview conducted by Woldeyesus Ammar with Martyr Woldedawit Temesghen. The story Woldedawit told in that interview about the prisoner release operation and the life of political prisoners in the 60s and 70s is so important part of our modern history and its continued struggle that this webstite wished to present it today for wider reading, including the new generation.

Woldedawit Temesghen and Seyoum Ogbamichael joined the ELF as teenagers and it was at the tender age (in the range of 18-20 years) that they became part of Eritrea’s growing population of political prisoners in 1965.

The organizer and overall coordinator of the 1975 liberation of prisoners was the memorable hero, Saeed Saleh, murdered by “unknown” killers in 1983 in Kassala, where Woldedawit Temesghen was also gunned down by the same killers in 1985.

In the interview reproduced below, Woldedawit tells many interesting accounts like the following:

· 11 political prisoners that were scheduled to be executive on 15 February 1975 were saved because the ‘Great Escape’ occurred three days earlier on 12 February.

· Woldedawit estimated that he and Seyoum could have talked politics to more than 25,000 short- and long-term prisoners between August 1965 and their release in February 1975.

· “We were dubbed double traitors – of the Christian [faith] and of “mother” Ethiopia...Our host in the Central Prison was the notorious murderer Major Tecle who christened us with epithets like ‘the Two Danger Boys’ ... I remember the day we were taken to the Central Prison, [Major Tecle] personally asking us our religion and occupation. We [Seyoum and I] answered: “religion, Christians, occupation – freedom fighters.” He then ordered his secretary to register: ‘Religion: Moslems. Occupation: bandits! ‘”

· The ordeal political prisoners faced in the 1960s and 1970s included: “locking us in morgues for several days in the company of decaying bodies of ELF suspects[killed during torture]; throwing us into very cool and muddy cells with hands and legs under heavy chains; taking us to the outskirts of the city and asking us to tell the ‘whole truth’ or choose burial in the graves we dug during the nocturnal investigations”.

· “Of the political prisoners we found at the Central Prison, eight were sentenced to death, 20 to several years and the rest were awaiting their sentences. Our roommates during the early years included Ahmed Feraj (hanged) Seyoum (hanged), Embaye Hidru and Major Belai. Hamed Ibrahim Timbar, Adem Turkai, Ahmed Awad and other ELF fighters who languished in the prison for years and years without being sentenced. K know many political prisoners who spent over ten years until they were freed by the ELF in February 1975. When the authorities fail to establish even a fake ‘crime’ against a political prisoner, they leave him alone in the prison – just forget taking him to court”.

· It may now sound strange and foolish but we wished to be hanged at that time so that most of our schoolmates and friends would commit themselves to the struggle. The then Eritrean prosecutor Amanuel Amde-Michael (Derg’s Deputy Premier in 1975) was strongly calling for a death sentence on me and Seyoum and we were not registering any objection. When the final sentence was read in the court, we were asked whether we would like to appeal. We said no and immediately started thinking about what to do in the prison for the next ten years.

· [Malnutrition]: At one time, doctors attempted to refuse giving us any medical help before the government ordered better food to the emaciated bodies in Sembel, Adi Khualla and other prisons. I remember the time when most of us could not stand because of hunger and we were crawling on our bellies like small babies … I cannot describe the prison conditions in full. I can only remember them for myself.

· “Many of the man-killers in the prisons were Eritrean nationals who sold their skin and honor for pay. The names Tewolde Tedla, Majors Tecle and Fasil, Captains Gabar, Sibhatu, Estephanos, Mengisteab and Seargent Kibrom will long ring in the former prison inmates in Eritrea. History will not absolve them. The traitor Tewolde Tedla was the number one enemy of the political prisoners of the sixties and early seventies.

Nharnet is presenting the story in two sections. Section one is about the prisoner release operations of 12 February 1975 from the Sembel and Adi Khualla prisons. Section two will coverer the extnended interview on the situation of Eritrean prisoners during a ten-year period between 1965 and 1975. Good reading.

Section one of the Interview with Martyr Woldedawit:

THE SEMBEL AND ADI KHUALLA OPERATIONS

The plan for the liberation of the prisoners in Asmara and Adi Khualla was launched immediately after the failure of another but different attempt to secure our release in 1974. The ELF asked our opinion whether we could agree for an exchange of prisoners with the three American army personnel who were then under [the detention of] the Revolution. We explained our fears of possible execution in the wake of a failure of such a plan. Anyway, the plan failed because of other [developments] and without affecting us. in mid-1974, Ethiopia showed some interest in the condition of Eritrean political prisoners when the masses voiced that old injustices against the Eritrean people should be stopped. But fully aware of Ethiopian conditions and the meaning of our protracted struggle, we suggested use of force coordinated with our own political moves and tactics from within.

The ELF agreed to our plan and formed a special unit to take charge of the operation. We supplied this unit with every detail of information it needed. These included sketch maps of every house and cell, names of prison authorities and guards to be approached for cooperation and what could be done with those opposed to the Eritrean national liberation struggle. Seyoum Ogbamichael headed the Adi Khualla prisoners’ committee for the operation. I led the committee at the Sembel prison in Asmara.

Adi Khualla

The Adi Khualla prison administrator was Ethiopian and our Tegadelti found it difficult to approach him for the plan. It was then decided hat our ELA Tegadeli should use force there. At the appointed date – 12.02.1975 – an ELA unit captured the police station inside Adi Khualla at about 10 am. Other units encircled the main prison. The Ethiopian commando and army stations were paralyzed by tactical manouvres. The commando leader was earlier informed of the operation and on that day deployed his unit in such a way that it would not shoot a single bullet; most of the commandos who were not yet members of the ELF were given day off. The army unit, consisting of a company, was mainly concerned with the defense of the camp for there was an intentionally spread rumour about ELF preparing to attack the camp of the Ethiopian army in the town.

Such was the situation when the ELA unit banged the prison gate open with an RGP. The [Ethiopian] prison administrator and few uncooperative staff were arrested by the guards working with the ELF. Evacuation of the prisoners was delayed until late in the evening to avoid any notice of the [operation] by the enemy so that the plan for Sembel may quietly follow suit. Additional ELA units entered the Adi Khualla prison at about 6 p.m. and all 300 prisoners left the place by dusk and spent the first night of their liberation at he village of Haret Ona.

Sembel

I was among the 700 or so prisoners in Sembel near the airport area of Asmara. The prison administrator by then was one of four recruits and gave his full cooperation to the plan. He was earlier contacted by ELF fighters who were entering the prison in [Ethiopian] army uniforms. Almost all the prison guards were agreed to the plan and the only fear was of the army sentry at the main gate and the nearby commando unit, also assigned to guard the prison.

At 7 p.m. February 12, an ELA unit in Ethiopian army uniform entered the prison in a supplies truck [belonging] to the prison administration. To the sentry at the main gate, [this] was nothing unusual. [Thus], the truck was allowed to enter and later to leave [on its way] back to the garage. [But it was not going to garage] – this time it was carrying the sick and disabled prisoners to freedom! The rest of us [at Sembel prison] planted ladders over the wire-fences which were also covered by all available blankets in the prison. It took us half an hour to complete the jump to freedom. We left one prison mate behind us; he was one of the insane friends in the prison; he refused to leave his cell and started to yell when we tried to carry him.

ELA units opened simultaneous fire all over the army camps inside Asmara as part of the operation. Other units stationed near Sembel wiped out the sentry at the gate and the nearby commando unit. Our prison guards joined the ELA fire against the enemy. We took our first nap in liberated Hazega, a few kilometres west of Asmara.

Section two of the Newsletter commentary and interview with Martyr Woldedawit that first appeared quarter of a century ago under the title:

RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRISONER

The martial law records of the Ethiopian authorities in Eritrea are not all ‘success stories’. Take for example the summary execution sentence of 11 political prisoners from the prison cells of Sembel and Adi Khualla: the assigned firing squad remained idle for the morning of 15 February 1975 because the to-be-victims were no longer there – they were freed by the Revolution three days earlier together with other 1,000 prisoners in those two ill-famed [dungeons].

[Eritrea’s first] great prison escape – rather, liberation of political prisoners – has few parallels in similar non-fiction events and is definitely an unprecedented heroic act so far in the national liberation struggle.

On this fifth [today, 30^th!] anniversary of that little known but great revolutionary operation, we present a summary of what actually happened on 12 February 1975 at the Adi Khualla and Sembel (Asmara) prisons and give [a picture] of the condition of political prisoners in Eritrea between 1965 and 1975. Our interviewee is non other than [Tegadalai] Woldedawit Temesghen, one of the leading cadres of the Eritrean Revolution and a brilliant commandant of the Eritrean Liberation Army (ELA). Dawit, as he is popularly known, was one of the “Two Danger Boys” of Ethiopian prison administrators between August 1965 to February 1975.

The occupation authorities were not mistaken. It was those two danger boys or black boys as they variously called them who led the resistance movement in the Ethiopian prisons in Eritrea.

During their nine-and-half year stay behind the bars, the two ELF fighters (the other being Seyoum Ogbamichael, chairman [at the time of the interview in 1980]of the General Union of Eritrean Peasants) witnessed all the ugly and brutal practices of the Ethiopians against the ‘fortunate’ political prisoners who could narrowly survive the fatal torture ordeals during police investigations. They and their circle of conscious political prisoners played a major role in awakening and politicizing a large number of people for the nationalist struggle. No gainsaying, prison is one of the unlikely places for such task, but the political work conducted from within the prisons in Eritrea is a rich material for historical records, as one having positively contributed in the intensification of the popular struggle from within. The countless escape attempts, prisoner strikes, confrontations with prison officials etc were a source of inspiration fro the ELF cells and other non-committal nationalists in the urban centres. The strugglers from within the prison did not only conduct literacy campaigns and political education classes in he prison cells but also succeeded to intimate themselves [and their ideals] with something like 25,000 short- and long-term prisoners and turn them to good nationalists.

In this interview, presented in its condensed form for reasons of space, Tegadalai Woldedawit assess the condition of life in prison in the 1960s and early 1970s. Most of his we’s refer to himself and Seyoum and in the later parts of the interview to their political circle as a whole. (The two fighters were among the key student leaders in Asmara in the early 1960s until they fled the city after violent student demonstrations in March 1965 and joined the armed wing of the Revolution.)

Question: Preoccupied as it is with the day-to-day affairs of the armed struggle, the ELF did not so far concern itself much with detailed recording of past developments and events – for instance, the condition of prison life in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Our readers would definitely like to have at least a cursory glance to the life of the Eritrean political prisoners in Ethiopian dungeons during the past two decades. We believe you are one of the right persons to speak on the subject.

Answer: I think you have started with the right observation. The Revolution is not giving proper and due attention to many things of the past. Rich experiences of our fighting masses should have been recorded without fail so that we make use of every aspect in the struggle. Our people’s sufferings in Ethiopian jails are inseparable part of the trials and tribulations of the fighting masses. Of course volumes could be written on the experiences of our political prisoners during the past four decades of our peaceful and armed struggle for self-determination and national independence.

Q. We know that you were one of the student leaders in the early 1960s and later spent ten years in Ethiopian prisons. Would you briefly tell us how it all happened?

A. After a mammoth student demonstration in March 1965, Seyoum Ogbamichael and myself found ourselves insecure in Asmara and decided to join the armed wing of the Revolution. When we stayed in the field for sometime, we were assigned to reorganize and streamline the ELF cells of workers and students in the Eritrean towns. We entered Asmara in mid-August that year and were finished with our task by the end of the month. We spent the last three days in the home of an ELF member in the Kidane Mehret quarter of the city. At about noon on 30 August 1965 while we were holding discussion with a prominent teacher in the city (Memhir Seyoum Negassi), we suddenly found ourselves gazing at strange visitors flanking a certain Ghirmai Yoseph who until then worked for the ELF. There was no need to ask questions. The area was surrounded by security people and we had no arms. We were soon whisked to the special security headquarters under the direct control of the Emperor’s representative in Eritrea. There we met another special quest from Kassala, Sudan – the renegade Mulugeta Ghiorghis who as ELF member in the Kassala office arranged our mission to Asmara and soon surrendered to the Ethiopian [Consulate in Kassala] and was flown to Asmara to buy amnesty at our expense.

Siraj Ahmed, the owner of the house where we were finally located, was taken from his workplace by the guidance of the same Ghirmai. (Siraj Ahmed was one of the most active nationalists in Asmara; he was incarcerated for nine years and was heroically martyred in Barentu in 1978.)

Our primary concern after arrest was to safeguard the ELF cells in Asmara by shouldering all the responsibility, at least those not known to Mulugeta Ghiorghis and Ghirmai Yoseph. This required utmost care and sacrifice – pure and simple. We faced it and could succeed to hide over 90% of our secrets. We could not save Siraj Ahmed but the rest were released within days. Even Seyoum Negassi who was found talking to us was released after a couple of months. (Memher Seyoum was martyred in 1977 overrun by a military vehicle on a pedestrian lane in Asmara – in one of the latest Ethiopian liquidation methods in the Eritrean cities.)

METHODS OF TORTURE

We of course suffered throughout the 114 months in prison; there was no single day in which we did not complain of wounds inflicted upon us by the prison guards. However, the first 40 days of interrogation by the security people were the worst. I know no one can describe them fully. It is during such interrogations that many members of the Eritrean nationalist movement perished, many of them caught in the streets and the countryside. Many Eritrean parents go on asking about the whereabouts of their sons and daughters still refusing to believe their inevitable fate in the hands of the bloodthirsty hangmen of Haile Selassie and his successors. Bodies of our fallen comrades were being in fact used against us in the interrogation period. The ordeal we and other political prisoners faced in the 1960s included: incessant physical torture until we got unconscious; dipping us in very dirty water for several minutes; giving us electric shocks in the most delicate parts of the body; locking us in morgues for several days in the company of decaying bodies – of course bodies of ELF suspects; throwing us into very cool and usually muddy cells with hands and legs under heavy chains; taking us to the outskirts of the city and asking us to say the ‘whole truth’ or choose burial in the graves we dug during the nocturnal investigations etc. I believe Ethiopia’s interrogation methods or tortures did not change much during the 20 years except the addition of a few modern techniques.

When the security men established their prosecution charges, they transferred us to the Central Prison in Asmara. In those days the Ethiopian authorities could still fool some of the people with their divide and rule tactics based on religion. The prison guards and most of the non-political prisoners were imbued with this venom. We were dubbed double traitors – of the Christian [faith] and of “mother” Ethiopia. the liberation fighters and their sympathizers were of course called “Moslem fanatics”. Our host in the Central Prison was the notorious murderer Major Tecle who ordered that we be guarded very strictly. He was the one who first christened us with epithets like “the Danger Boys” and “those two black boys”, black of course not referring to the complexion of our skins. I remember the day we were taken to the Central Prison, [Major Tecle] personally asking us our religion and occupation. We [Seyoum Ogbamichael and I] answered: “religion, Christians, occupation – freedom fighters.” He then ordered his secretary to register: “Religion: Moslems. Occupation: bandits!”

Major Tecle, who in the 1940s and 1950s served as Ethiopia’s paid assassin under the traitorous Unionist Party, carried a campaign to picture us as lunatics and duped ‘killers’.

Q. How many political prisoners did you find among the prison inmates in the Central Prison?

A. We found a little over hundred political prisoners. But one must remember that every provincial town in the country kept many political prisoners for several years without bringing them to the court, and those surviving the police tortures were the few fortunate ones, as I said earlier. Of the political prisoners we found at the Central Prison or the Central, as it was called eight were sentenced to death, 20 to several years and the rest were awaiting their sentences. Our roommates during the early years included Ahmed Feraj (hanged) Seyoum (hanged), Embaye Hidru and Major Belai. Hamed Ibrahim Tembar, Adem Turkai, Ahmed Awad and other ELF fighters who languished in the prison for years and years without being sentenced. I know many political prisoners who spent over ten years until they were freed by the ELF in February 1975. This is because when the authorities fail to establish even a fake ‘crime’ against a political prisoner, they leave him alone in the prison – just forget taking him to court.

Q. It is said that your stiff-neckedness and admittance of your membership in the Revolution worsened your case in the courts. Don’t you think you could have served the national liberation struggle better by coming out of prison on time than suffering there for a decade?

A. It is true that we were sentenced for ten years and that the only extenuating circumstance was our young age. But there was little to hide in our case. The presence of the renegade Mulugheta was enough to seal off our fate. Besides, our case was handled with the utmost care and remained strictly under the authority of the Emperor’s representative.

On the other hand our imprisonment was widely talked about especially among the young generation that was starting to seriously involve itself in the struggle. We knew that some of our activities in the prison would leak out and hoped this would encourage more and more youth to join the struggle. And don’t forget that in those years the idea of “Christian” freedom fighter was almost unbelievable to Ethiopia and we did our best to unmask the falsehood of this mentality in the prisons and the court-rooms. For instance, the judges were confounded by our insistence to be called fighters of the Eritrean Liberation Front whenever they referred to us as the ‘bandits’ Some of the judges openly said they fully understood our just demand to be called by our correct name, whatever that may mean to the Ethiopian authorities. This kind of confrontation was in an indirect way rousing nationalist feeling among Eritrean national in the courts and the prison.

It may now sound strange and foolish but I tell you we wished to be hanged at that time so that most of our schoolmates and friends would commit themselves to the struggle. Our defense council was a very weak person and we did not dislike that. The prosecutor at court, the then Eritrean attorney general Amanuel Amde-Michael ( Derg’s Deputy Premier in 1975) was strongly calling for a death sentence on me and Seyoum and we were not registering any objection. When the final sentence was read in the court, we were asked whether we would like to appeal. We said no and immediately started thinking about what to do in the prison for the next ten years.

Q. Did physical torture end with the police interrogations?

A. Physical and mental torture was continuous, although some of the suffering was of our own making. Let me summarize the rest of the story under the following headings:

WE AND THE PRISON AUTHORITIES

We were at loggerheads with the authorities throughout the years in the Ethiopian prison. The prison authorities always invented excuses to punish us severely. All escape attempts, strikes and ‘bad behavior’ inside the prison were always considered to have originated from us two. Exaggerating our continued links with the ELF, the authorities felt happy and more secure to have us locked in the [isolation] cells, better known to prisoners by their Italian name of cella. In actual fact, we believed that constant strikes in the prison could have their impact on the national struggle beyond the prison compound and created reasons to start one. We also knew that strikes were the main worry of the prison authorities whose promotion for higher rank depended on keeping the prisoners quiet.

The cella, then remained the main weapon against us. It is a very a small compartment where one does not have a space even to stretch one’s legs. It had no windows save a small hole near the ceiling. A bucket is the only item in it. This is the ‘toilet’, which they sometimes forget to clean for weeks. As if this were not enough, the prisoner in cella is handcuffed and carried heavy chains on the ankles. No blanket, no sheet to protect oneself from the cold. Bugs are in plenty and are given all the freedom to enjoy the chained human body. I have no doubt that our cells or cellas should be the worst places of all prisons in the world. Seyoum, myself and a few other prisoners spent over one third of the prison term in these cells. Many were dying in the cellas. For instance, my long-time room-mate Lukas, a political prisoner of unquestionable endurance and courage, was martyred in such a cell.

Many of the man-killers in the prisons were Eritrean nationals who sold their skin and honor for pay. The name Tewolde Tedla, Majors Tecle and Fasil, Captains Gabar, Sibhatu, Estephanos, Mengisteab and Seargent Kibrom will long ring in the former prison inmates in Eritrea. History will not absolve them. The traitor Tewolde Tedla was the number one enemy of the political prisoners of the sixties and early seventies. As all the Ethiopian authorities in Eritrea, he was a confirmed killer, a misanthrope. This man was also responsible in reducing the daily expense of each prisoner from 35 cents to 21 cents per day. He believed that prisoners should be starved so that they may repent their ‘crimes’. He stopped annual clothing provisions and ordered that families should be responsible for these matters. He divided prisoners on tribal and regional basis to destroy the morale of the political prisoners. People were executed in the prison compound so that the rest may be terrorized. Tewolde Tedla was responsible for the death of many ‘freed’ prisoners – who were killed immediately after their release from prison.

WE AND THE PRISON GUARDS

The prison guards, recruited through nepotistic methods, were not educated and had no idea of politics as such. They were told we were lunatics and duped Moslem or Arab agents. They were told not to talk to us and had the authority to punish us at whim. We are doing it for our bread, they would say. It was not easy to approach such people for the first three to four years of our imprisonment. We however exerted tremendous efforts to politicize and recruit some of the guards. Some success was made after 1970; many of them started to sympathize with our cause and a few became ELF members (prison guards) relieved us of the chains for a few hours a day. On the other hand, the guards who remained loyal to the authorities increased their brutalities over us. Terrorization of parents of the political prisoners by letting out rumors and lies about the condition of their sons in the prison was one of their biggest crimes.

One should mention here the difficulties our mothers faced, especially during their visits to us. They were rarely allowed to see us (no cella prisoner can see visitors) and had to come to the prison gates 30 to 40 times to have one day’s chance to see us for two to three minutes across the wire-fences. They were turned to walking skeletons during the ten-year period of our imprisonment. I would say, and it is no exaggeration that our parents struggled more than we did.

OUR RELATIONS WITH THE REVOLUTION

In the initial years, we had quite good communication with the field. Things however worsened gradually. Some cadres of the ELF were visiting some political prisoners, but only based on the zonal division of the Eritrean Liberation Army. Our messages to the leadership did not change matters. We also believed that our escape attempts could have succeeded in the late 1970s if the ELF leadership was responsible enough to heed our calls. But what else can one expect from the then ‘Supreme Council’?

Nevertheless, we lived abreast all developments in the Revolution and the country. The constant flow of prisoners supplied us with detailed information. We at times wished that the leadership’s were in the prison so that it could fully appreciate what is going on all over the country. (Communication facilities of the Revolution were not yet developed in those years and couriers took several months to carry a message from on region to the other).

OUR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE IN PRISON

In the start, when all the prison atmosphere was opposed to our ideas and adamancy, we could hardly conduct successful political work. Starting in the late sixties, we were somewhat succeeding with our politicization efforts until we won the hearts and minds of all prisoners by 1974.

Over 5,000 political prisoners, with terms ranging from a few months to several years, had direct participation in the political work inside the prison,. Over 20,000 other prisoners were also briefed on the political struggle led by the ELF. Many of these people later played active roles in the struggle.

The Ethiopian authorities had no idea of correcting ‘convicts’. They believed that their task was to demoralize prisoners and make life unbearable to them. In other words, punishment was the sole essence of the prison institution.

We were conducting literacy campaign classes whenever we could. The new literates were writing the alphabet on their hands and legs because pencls and exercise books were not allowed. No books were permitted to the prisons except the Bible and Koran. Some books were allowed after 1971. However, Arabic books continued to be on the ban; a room-mate who acquired “Teach Yourself Swahili” had it seized from him because the prison authorities believed this language was not much different from Arabic.

Activities outside the prison rooms included hard labour on rope manufacture and masonry. Medical services were also almost non-existent although some prisoners could be allowed to sleep in the clinic for several months without being ill. But then they or their families must be filthy rich. The visiting doctors who come once in a blue moon subscribe treatment but the prison authorities tell the inmate to but his own medicine! At normal times – that is when one is not ordered to the cella – we sleep in rooms which accommodate 100 to 120 inmates. Lunatics, persons infected by TB and other contagious diseases live together. Most of the diseases were caused by malnutrition. At one time, doctors were said to have complained of the condition of prisoners in Eritrea and attempted to refuse giving us any medical help before the government ordered better food to the emaciated bodies in Sembel, Adi Khualla and other prisons. Their appeals only fell to deaf ears. I remember the time when most of us could not stand because of hunger and we were crawling on our bellies like small babies … I told you one cannot describe the prison conditions in full. I can only remember them for myself.

END

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