2015 prison census - Ethiopia: Yusuf Getachew

Police officers raided the Addis Ababa home of Yusuf, editor of the now-defunct Ye Muslimoch Guday (Muslim Affairs), as part of a broad crackdown on journalists and news outlets reporting on protests staged by Ethiopian Muslims. The Muslims were demonstrating against government policies they said interfered with their religious freedom. The government sought to link the protesters to Islamist extremists and tried to suppress coverage by arresting several local and international journalists and forcing publications to close down, according to local journalists and news reports.

After Yusuf's arrest, other Ye Muslimoch Guday journalists went into hiding, and the publication ceased operations, local journalists told CPJ.

Yusuf spent weeks in pretrial custody at the Maekelawi federal detention center without access to his family and limited contact with his lawyer, according to local journalists.

In October 2012, he was formally charged under the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Law with plotting acts of "terrorism [and] intending to advance a political, religious, or ideological cause," according to local journalists. Yusuf told the court he had been beaten in custody, local journalists told CPJ.

Prosecutors accused Yusuf of inciting violence in columns in Ye Muslimoch Guday by alleging that the government-appointed Supreme Council for Muslim Affairs was corrupt and lacked legitimacy, according to local journalists and court documents obtained by CPJ. The prosecution also used as evidence Yusuf's CDs with Islamic teachings even though these were widely available in markets, according to local journalists.

In August 2015, the Addis High Court sentenced Yusuf to seven years in prison, according to local journalists and news reports. The journalist plans to appeal, the sources said.

Yusuf is being held at Kality Prison in Addis Ababa.