Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa – Eritrea has no plans to release a jailed Swedish-Eritrean journalist held for almost eight years without trial, the Eritrean president said in an interview aired on Swedish television Tuesday.

“I don’t know, I don’t even care about where he is or what he is doing,” President Isias Afeworki said when asked about the whereabouts of Dawit Isak or what he was charged with.

“He did a big mistake and he is accountable for what he did,” the president said in the interview with commercial broadcaster TV4 and also published in the Expressen newspaper.

“We don’t release him, we don’t take to trial,” the president said. “We know how to deal with him and others like him. We have our own ways of dealing with that.”

“The CIA would finance newspapers, hire journalists, open bank accounts for them outside the country and give them what they have to write in their papers,” he said.
The president criticized the Swedish government for trying to raise Isaak’s case through other countries, and said “for me Sweden is irrelevant.”

- WIC