The Federal High Court Lideta Branch, First Criminal Bench has today postponed the ruling on Meskerem Abera’s Guilty Verdict, saying the juries are not fully present at the court.
The court has postponed the ruling to November 20, 2024.
Meskerem Abera, the founding editor of Ethio Nikat Media (YouTube channel), lecturer, and opinion-maker, is accused of “inciting violence and conflict between communities using a computer,” under the “terrorism” case file of Dr. Wondwossen Assefa, Dawit Begashaw, Gobeze Sisay, and Genet Asmamaw.
The Federal High Court found Meskerem guilty of criminal charges related to computer crimes and passed a verdict on Friday, November 1, 2024.
She was found guilty of two of her programs that were broadcast on YouTube. The first one is titled, “A Message to General Abebaw Tadesse, ” aired on April 12, 2022. The second one is titled, “What is going on in Amhara region?,” aired on April 15, 2022, BBC Amharic reported.
An Ethiopian law on computer crime, under proclamation No.958/2016, states that threatening “another person or his families with serious danger or injury by disseminating any writing, video, audio or any other image through a computer systems shall be punishable, with simple imprisonment not exceeding three years or in a serious cases with rigorous imprisonment not exceeding five years.”
Although Meskerem argued that the charge was against “the rights to freedom of speech”, the court declined her appeal, saying “Freedom of speech and expression has restrictions.”
Meskerem had been detained and released two times before she was arrested for the third time on April 9, 2023, and remained in custody till today.
On 3 May 2024, during World Press Freedom Day, various embassies in Addis Ababa issued a statement condemning the intimidation of journalists by authorities in Ethiopia.
Joint Statement on #WorldPressFreedomDay 👇 pic.twitter.com/kivS3cYcGr
— UK in Ethiopia 🇬🇧 (@UKinEthiopia) May 3, 2024
According to the Coalition for Women in Journalism, Meskerem was arrested for undisclosed reasons on May 21, 2022, at Bole International Airport on her return from Bahir Dar, the capital of Amhara region to Addis Ababa and released on bail on January 5, 2023.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have repeatedly called on the Ethiopian authorities to release journalists and opinion makers.
Data from RSF indicates that many journalists are still in custody including Genet Asmamaw, a journalist with the online media outlet Yegna Media, Dawit Begashaw, editor-in-chief of the online media outlet Arat Kilo, Abay Zewdu, the director of the Amhara Media Center (YouTube channel), and Gobeze Sisay, founder of The Voice of Amhara (YouTube channel).
