Ethiopia
Outspoken editor beaten unconciousPosted Dec 17 2008
Several assailants brutally attacked Amare Aregawi, editor of the Amharic and English-language paper The Reporter, following a parent-teacher meeting at his son’s school. He was struck on the back of the head, then left lying on the ground, bleeding and unconscious. Medics rushed him to a hospital in the capital, Addis Ababa, from which he was released Nov. 4.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that several people witnessed men approach Aregawi from behind and strike him in the head with a stone. The attackers repeatedly beat him until he was unconscious. They then attempted to flee in a getaway car, but were stopped by a traffic jam. Two of the assailants were apprehended at the scene, a third was captured Nov. 2, and a fourth remains on the loose.
This is not Aregawi’s first encounter with attacks stemming from controversial reports published by his newspaper. According to CPJ, Aregawi and other staff members of The Reporter have recently received anonymous threats due to a series of articles claiming that the close friends of Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Sheikh Mohammed Hussein a-Amoudi were mishandling his finances. Additionally, Aregawi was arrested in August and held for six days in conjunction with a story about a labor disagreement at a government-run brewery.