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Kenyan Journalist Yassin Juma yet to be released by Ethiopia despite court order


Kenyan journalist Yassin Juma is still detained in Ethiopia despite a court granting him bail last week. This is according Juma’s lawyers.

Mr Juma, whose real name is Collins Osemo Juma, was on August 5 freed on bail by the court at Arada sub-city. A higher court upheld the bail conditions two days later.

However, lawyer Tuli Bayisa has been quoted by local media saying he went back to court on Monday to push for Juma’s release having paid the bail.

He said the judge told him police are refusing to let Juma go.

“They are telling her (the judge) first it’s the federal police that has been investigating them, and now the Addis Ababa police commission wants to investigate the matter once again, they said,” said Bayisa.

On Monday, Kenya’s Ambassador to Ethiopia Catherine Mwangi, protested Ethiopia’s continued detention of the journalist.

ETHIC VIOLENCE

“The embassy notes with concern that he has still not been released and that this is causing him and his family a lot of distress,” the ambassador wrote in a letter to the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry.

However, police, who had been detaining the journalist since he was arrested early in July, were still holding him on Monday.

Juma was arrested in July along with two Ethiopian journalists and charged with inciting ethnic violence and plotting to kill senior Ethiopian officials, which they strongly deny.

Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa, which represents about 450 international journalists in the region, is now calling for Juma’s immediate release.