#Ethiopia Even if you do not agree that #Bekele #Gerba was not a - TopicsExpress

#Ethiopia Even if you do not agree that #Bekele #Gerba was not a criminal in the first place, please at least don’t deny him a chance to conditional release which every criminal gets. According to Article 201 of the Ethiopian Criminal Code, there is a possibility of anticipatory conditional release for prisoners, as a means of reform and social reinstatement. Article 202 further provides that when a prisoner has served two-thirds of a sentence of imprisonment or twenty years in case of life imprisonment, the Court may , on the recommendation of the management of the prison or on the petition of the criminal, order conditional release. Though conditional release is not a right and “it must be deserved by the criminal”, at least in the “law”, granting or denying conditional release is not within the power of prison administrations or their bosses in the executive. What prison administrations can do is make a recommendation. Article 202 clearly indicated that, even without such recommendation, conditional release can be ordered based on the petition of the criminal. Why am I talking about this? It is because of the recent discussion on social media about the fact that the government is deliberately delaying the conditional release of Bekele Gerba. (Former dep. Chairperson of Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM)) In fact it would not have been necessary to repeat the above explanation after Zelalem Kibret accurately explained how the conditional release system works one of his recent blog posts. I am writing this because I read on Daniel Brihane’s blog, Horn Affairs, that a senior Ethiopian government official said that, the government “has no intention of releasing Bekele Gerba until he completes the full prison term. If this is the position of the government, it is not a position which has legal support. I think Horn Affairs should have asked, and still should, how the intention of the government is relevant while it does not have power to grant or deny conditional release? If the senior government official was talking about the power of the prison administration to make recommendation(though I don’t think he/she was), how can he/she make such statement before the “thorough evaluation” which the prison claims that it conducts before deciding on such issues and Bekele Gerba’s case has not even reached that stage? In my view, either the government official mistakenly thought it is within the power of the executive to grant or deny conditional release (perhaps he/she thought the question was about pardon) or by assuming that a law which supports his/her position exists, he/she exposed how the system really works (i.e., the fact that Ethiopian Courts are not independent and in some cases they receive direct orders from the executive). Though I personally believe the latter is the case, I am ready to accept the first was the case if the government official retracts its statement and let Bekele Gerba to be released from prison following the “normal” legal procedure. I think Horn Affairs should approach the relevant government official/s again, explain the issue properly and comeback with another report on the issue. And here is my message to Daniel Berhane. I learnt that you said “No one shall spend a day more than what the courts and the laws require. If that happens, there is no doubt that all of us will protest against it.” I have no sufficient reason to doubt that you were not being honest when you said this. And, I hope, all people, including those who have difficulty to accept Bekele Gerba was not a criminal in the first place, would not approve the government’s intention to deny him a possibility of conditional release which is available for every criminal including those sentenced for life imprisonment. hornaffairs/en/2014/01/24/ethiopia-bekele-gerba-release/