Volume 49, Number 7 · April 25, 2002
The Torturers Among Us
By William F. Schulz
On February 13, 1978, Edgegayehu Taye, a twenty-one-year-old employee of Ethiopia's Ministry of Agriculture, was taken into custody by the military government. Her father had been a prominent official in the previous regime of Haile Selassie, and this may have been the cause of her arrest. Transported to a detention center, Taye was ordered to remove her clothes. With her arms and legs bound, she was suspended from a pole and threatened with death if she refused to admit that she was a member of a political opposition group. For several hours guards beat her and poured water on her wounds to increase the pain. Finally she was cut down from the pole and taken to a prison cell but received no medical care for her injuries. For the next three years Edgegayehu Taye languished in various prisons in Addis Ababa until, with no explanation, she was released. During her years in custody she was never charged with a crime.
Feature, 3033 words
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