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STOCKHOLM: A Swedish-Eritrean journalist held incommunicado without charge in Eritrea for more than 23 years won a Swedish rights prize on Monday for his fight for freedom of expression, the jury said.
Dawit Isaak was among a group of around two dozen people, including senior cabinet ministers, members of parliament and independent journalists, who were seized in a purge in September 2001.
He was awarded the Edelstam Prize “for his outstanding contribution and exceptional courage in standing up for freedom of expression, one’s beliefs, and in the defense of human rights,” the Edelstam Foundation said in a statement.
Amnesty International considers Isaak a prisoner of conscience, and press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says he and his colleagues detained at the same time are the longest-held journalists in the world.
UN rights experts have demanded Asmara immediately release him.
Eritrea has provided no news about him, and there are fears he may no longer even be alive. He would be 60 years old.
His daughter Betlehem Isaak will accept the award on his behalf in Stockholm on November 19.
Isaak fled to Sweden in 1987 during Eritrea’s struggle against Ethiopia which eventually led to independence in 1993.
After obtaining Swedish citizenship, he returned to Eritrea in 2001 to help shape the media landscape, and co-founded Setit, the country’s first independent newspaper.
He was arrested shortly after the paper published articles demanding political reforms.
Asmara has not provided any information about his whereabouts or health over the years, which UN experts in 2021 deemed “extremely concerning.”
But they said a credible source had indicated Isaak was still alive in September 2020.
The Edelstam Prize is awarded in memory of Swedish diplomat Harald Edelstam, who as ambassador to Chile at the time of Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup granted thousands of Chileans and other Latin Americans safe conduct to, and political asylum in, Sweden.

ANKARA: An Istanbul court late on Saturday formally arrested a Turkish journalist over his social media posts on prosecutors investigating a mayor from Turkiye’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), his lawyer said.
Furkan Karabay, a reporter with news website 10Haber, was detained early on Friday after writing on X the names of prosecutors conducting an investigation into the mayor.
Ahmet Ozer, the mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district, was arrested on Oct. 30 after prosecutors accused him of having ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), banned as a terrorist group in Turkiye.
Late on Saturday, the court ordered the arrest of Karabay pending trial, ruling his social media posts were “targeting public officials involved in the fight against terrorism,” a court document seen by Reuters showed.
In his statement to court, Karabay denied the accusation, saying that the names of the prosecutors were reported by a number of media outlets and CHP leader Ozgur Ozel himself mentioned name of the prosecutor.
Ozel at the time condemned the investigation into the mayor, saying that the prosecutor was instructed by President Tayyip Erdogan.
Karabay’s lawyer Enes Ermaner said the detention was unlawful.
“A journalist was arrested for reporting on people whose names are well known. It’s a shame,” Ermaner said.
Press freedom groups and the main opposition party condemned the arrest with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) representative Erol Onderoglu saying that Karabay’s pre-trial detention aims punishment in advance.
RSF ranked Turkiye 158th out of 180 countries in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index.
“The arrest of a journalist solely for reporting and informing the public is a serious blow to press freedom and democratic values,” the Progressive Journalists Association said in a statement.