Thousands imprisoned after days of violence [Full version]

In the early hours of tomorrow [Monday] morning, Rahel will set out from her small house in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa and start searching the streets for her missing husband.

The last time she saw him was 11 days ago when he popped out to buy food from a nearby stall and never came back. The father-of-two became one of thousands of people who disappeared after being picked up by police at the climax of three days of political violence.

"People say some of the prisoners might be in court on Monday or might be released," said Rahel who only wanted her first name to be used to protect her identity. "I will go out to find him. His daughter is crying and I can't be on my own any more. But we haven't heard anything about him since he disappeared. We don't know anything for sure."

She is not the only one in the dark in Addis Ababa a week after bloody clashes between armed police and stone-throwing protesters left at least 36 dead.

Families across the city were yesterday still waiting for definite news of the fate of an estimated 2,300 detainees, despite increasing pressure on the Ethiopian government by human rights groups, Live Eight supremo Bob Geldof and the UK's development secretary Hilary Benn.

The unrest started on Monday last week when students at Addis Ababa University defied a government ban on demonstrations to protest against what they saw as a string of irregularities in Ethiopia's May 15 national elections.

It came to a climax two days later when police in the commercial heart of the city opened fire on crowds that the authorities claimed were trying to storm banks and police stations.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) on Friday said it was taking the government to court in an effort to track down six of its members who disappeared after the unrest.

"If we don't know where our own members are, then how can families be expected to find their loved ones," said Adam Melaku, EHRCO Secretary General. "People are going out to the detention centres to find them."

The Ethiopian government on Friday confirmed that up to 3,000 people were arrested in the capital in the aftermath of the violence. Around 700 were released over the past three days, either without charge or on bail.

Bereket Simon, Ethiopia's Minister of Information, defended the mass arrests and use of deadly force, saying they had contained the violence. "When the protesters rampaged through the city, the police had to put a stop to it. They had to isolate the rioters and people engaged in destructive activities."

He added that 500 of the most serious cases had already been taken to court and promised that further detainees would be released next week after their cases were reviewed.

The crisis has tarnished the reputation of a regime which has been held up by many as one of the most progressive in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Last year Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was named as one of the key members of Tony Blair's flagship Commission for Africa – a body of leading economists and statesmen charged with the task of drawing up an action plan to solve some of the poverty-stricken continent's worst ills.

Last week Ethiopia was one of 18 countries picked out for debt relief in a ground-breaking development deal brokered by the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

But on Wednesday, Hilary Benn, the UK's secretary of state for development, flew into Addis Ababa to deliver a sharp rebuke to the Ethiopian government. The minister spoke of the UK's "grave concern" over the deaths and detentions and announced that he was freezing a planned £20 million increase in aid to Ethiopia.

"I raised with Prime Minister Meles specifically the question of those who have been detained, the importance of allowing access by the Red Cross to the detention facilities, the importance of notifying the families of those being detained of what’s happened to them and the need for people either to be charged in line with Ethiopian law or for them to be released," he said.

Bob Geldof also slammed the crackdown on Ethiopian protesters, telling Channel 4 News: "Spare me, what are they doing? It is pathetic. I despair, I really despair."

Early provisional results showed that the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had held on to power despite unprecedented gains from opposition groups in the country's third ever multi-party elections.

But the National Election Board of Ethiopia on Friday announced it had launched an investigation into the voting in almost 40 per cent of the country's 547 seats. The move followed complaints from the leading opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and other parties of irregularities including vote rigging and intimidation of candidates.