Zegabi

Abiy Ahmed’s regime marked the Ethiopian New Year with a clemency wave that freed more than 600 federal prisoners, including National Movement of Amhara (NaMA) parliamentarian Christian Tadele. State and rights-commission messaging cast the move as an early delivery on National Dialogue recommendations. The same file shows the limits of that pitch: about 28 people linked to Christian Tadele’s case file, including journalists and politicians tied to the Amhara conflict, remain in custody after declining to sign government pardon paperwork.

According to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, the releases followed roughly five months of engagement with federal authorities. Convicted prisoners were processed through pardon channels; some pending cases were conditionally discontinued. Among those freed, outlets including Ethio Negari and Ethio Negari, citing the EHRC, reports that some journalists and politicians detained in connection with the Amhara conflict were not released because they refused to sign a document that would have them accept responsibility for instability in the region. Fidel Post similarly says 28 people on the Christian Tadele-associated file stayed jailed after declining formal pardon applications. Independent summaries circulating from BBC Amharic and The Reporter coverage name remaining figures such as Yohannes Buayalew and journalist Meskerem Abera among those still held; treat individual name lists as reported by those outlets, not as a complete official roster.

Clemency does not pause the war that put many Amhara political cases in motion. Zegabi’s own September 16 summary of the Amhara Association of America’s September 7 to 13 update still showed fighting and rights violations across eight Amhara zones, including contested drone strikes and civilian harm, even as Addis Ababa sold forgiveness branding for Enkutatash. A release that restores some opposition voices while conditioning freedom on admission of blame is a selective opening, not a ceasefire.

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Readers should also keep the numbers soft where verification is thin. “More than 600” is the EHRC and government-facing figure repeated across Ethio Negari, Fidel Post, and Fana. The holdout count of about 28 comes from EHRC-linked reporting and secondary summaries; Addis has not published a fully transparent, name-by-name reconciliation of who remains jailed and on what charges.

Sources: Ethiopian Human Rights Commission statements as reported by Ethio Negari (Sept 10, 2026); Fidel Post (Sept 10, 2026); Fana Media Corporation (Sept 16, 2026); Amhara Association of America war update summarized on Zegabi (Sept 16, 2026).

e-calls/”>Fidel Post name Christian Tadele, Addis Ababa council member Kassa Teshager, and former Ezema chair Chane Kebede, also rendered Kebede Chane. Abiy Ahmed publicly tied the gesture to national dialogue outcomes, urging differences to be handled with “the pen and ideas, not guns and force,” language later amplified in state-aligned coverage such as Fana Media Corporation.