Kampala, Uganda – On Thursday 22 February at 3.55 pm local time, plainclothes security officers arrested the French national Antoine Galindo, an African Intelligence journalist on a reporting assignment in Ethiopia.
He has since then been detained at the Addis Ababa Police Commission in the Bole district.
In a press release from the publication, Journalist Antoine Galindo arrived in Addis Ababa on 13 February to cover an African Union summit and Ethiopian news.
“He has been suspected of ‘conspiracy to create chaos in Ethiopia’ and was brought before a judge on 24 February,” reads the release by Indigo Publications Group, the publishers of Africa Intelligence.
Based in Paris, Africa Intelligence has been a leading news source on the African continent since 1981. It is published by independent press group Indigo Publications.
His detention has been extended until 1 March, when the next hearing of his case will occur.
“These spurious accusations are not based on any tangible evidence that might justify this extended deprivation of liberty,” said the publication.
Antoine Galindo, a journalist known to the Ethiopia Media Authority, had informed the Ethiopian authorities of his assignment in the country and had a visa authorizing him to work there as a journalist.
“Indigo Publications is outraged by his unjustified arrest, which is also a serious attack on press freedom,” said the publication.
The publication calls on the Ethiopian authorities to urgently release Antoine Galindo.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) wrote yesterday and said Ethiopia is the second-worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, with at least eight journalists behind bars on December 1, 2023, according to CPJ’s latest annual prison census of jailed journalists imprisoned globally.
The eight are still jailed, with four of them detained as a result of a state of emergency declared on August 4 in response to the conflict in Amhara state, and have never been charged or brought to court.
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