ICC Note:
ICC continues to lobby for the freedom of two men falsely accused of crimes they didn’t commit by local Muslims outrged by their conversion from Islam to Christianity. To get involved, consider joining ICC in making phone calls to Ethiopian embassies around the world: http://info.persecution.org/CallEthiopia. Or, considering donating to ICC’s Hand of Hope Legal Fund, which allows us to defend Christians unable to defend themselves: http://goo.gl/hpAmVd.
12/14/2014 Ethiopia (Bos News Life) – An influential rights group says three Christian men have been “wrongfully arrested” in southern Ethiopia and that two of them face years of imprisonment for refusing to abandon their faith in Jesus Christ and return to Islam.
International Christian Concern (ICC) and local Christians said Nura Araro, Soka Araro and Obsa Ogeto were detained August 12 in the town of Shashemene, some 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa.
While Nura Araro was released on August 12, Christian converts Soka Araro and Obsa Ogeto face up to five years and three years imprisonment respectively on trumped-up charges of growing and distributing illegal substances, according to ICC investigators.
“Before their imprisonment, people sent messages to these guys, saying, ‘if you are not back to your [Islamic] faith, you will face our trap,'” their pastor explained in published remarks. “Its…widely known the imprisonment was religiously motivated. We know it to be an unconstitutional attack,” the church leader said, speaking on condition of anonymity, amid security concerns.
Nura Araro added that local Muslims “orchestrated” a trap with police of regional “Kebele district leaders, political officers and court judges as well.”
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