How many of us think about our safety while transiting through an airport anywhere in the world? We expect it to be none eventful experience, with our luggage automatically transferred and we ushered from the one gate to the next – with minimal to no contact with any government official from the country in which we are transiting.
In June 2014, my husband Andy Tsege, who is a British national and had been living in London since 1979, was transiting via Saana airport in Yemen and he never made it to his final destination - Eritrea. He just disappeared in the airport. We didn’t know his whereabouts for 10 days. After 10 days, we found out that Andy was snatched illegally and transferred from the airport to Ethiopia. He was handcuffed, hooded and flown to Ethiopia by the Ethiopian security forces the same day in charter plane. When we found out that he had been transferred to Ethiopia, the whole world went black for me as I thought he was as good as dead – he was in the custody of the Ethiopian regime – a regime that routinely made “examples” of political activists by broadcasting their captures and parading them on TV. In Andy’s case they said absolutely nothing for 10 solid days. It was an absolute shock for me that Andy was actually in the custody of the Ethiopian regime – a regime that had sentenced him to death while he was at home in London in 2009 for his activism to bring about democracy in Ethiopia.
He was kept in solitary confinement for over a year in unknown location. In that year the only person that was allowed to see him from the outside world was the UK ambassador – the ambassador was only granted a visit three times in that year. For each of the visit, Andy was brought to a meeting point away from the location where he was detained. He was transported to and from the meeting location with a hood over his head. The visits were never private.
After the year, he was transferred to a jail near the capital city, dubbed Ethiopia's 'gulag'. From what he told the UK Ambassador at the time, we knew he was kept in a very small cell with two other cellmates in a very unhygienic and terrible condition. Until he was released four years later, he remained a prisoner of the Ethiopian security forces rather than the prison authority. He wasn’t given a prisoner number. He was kept outside the larger prison population – even worse than his solitary confinement. His contact to the outside world was the weekly visit from his 90-year-old father and the random UK ambassador’s visits. Our three children and I were refused visa so we couldn’t visit him.
The saddest part during Andy’s imprisonment was how his case had been handled by the UK government. I thought the Foreign Office would do more to help him – considering he was abducted in an international airport and taken to a third country illegally.
The UK couldn’t even manage to establish regular consular visits. It was at the pleasure of the Ethiopian government when they were granted the monthly visit. In total, the UK managed about 17 visits over the 3 years.
Throughout the four years, the UK government never said what happened to Andy was wrong or illegal. Instead, they claimed they were concerned about Andy’s welfare and they took his case seriously. The FCO said they wanted to get lawyer that could challenge his imprisonment even when the Ethiopian government stated he couldn’t appeal his conviction and refused him access to lawyer. NOT to mention the tiny detail of how someone can get justice from a gov’t that had abducted him and brought him illegally and abused him as prisoner. The FCO’s “strategy” to support Andy was really surreal and farcical.
Foreign Office wouldn’t acknowledge that whatever their “strategy” – however minimal and inadequate of a strategy I think it was - they had been entirely unsuccessful. I found it highly alarming that the Ethiopian Government ignored requests or simply didn’t fulfil promises to highest UK Government officials including those given to Boris Johnson and to his predecessor Philip Hammond and the former Prime Minister David Cameron. There was no response/reaction from the UK government. There was NO red line.
Ethiopia was at the time the largest aid recipient of the UK, the UK had presence in every sector of the Ethiopian government - the FCO themselves say the UK embassy in Ethiopia is one of their largest missions in Africa with over 8 UK departments represented at the embassy. Another important point is Ethiopia didn’t have the complicated historical past with UK. So one could only conclude with this kind of relationship that the UK must have lots of influence and leverages - all of which they refused to use, allowing for an innocent man to languish in prison.
It is fair to say, we were frustrated and didn’t know how we were going to get Andy home. But in the end what brought Andy home was the change of government in Ethiopia. Andy was released 29th May 2018 and arrived home on the 1st June 2018.
I don’t want any family to go through what we went through. Our children were effectively orphans for four years – their dad in dark place and their mom working day and night trying to get their dad home.
If the FCO had only done the right thing and stood up for its citizen maybe Andy’s time in prison would have been shortened or at the least my kids would have had their mom with them throughout.