Ethiopia released Israeli businessman Menashe Levy on Friday, 21 June 2019, after he had spent four years in custody. Ynet reported that he had been held on a tax-evasion case, and that he was freed after his health worsened. The paper said Israel had been in diplomatic contacts for his release, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had spoken with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed about the case a few days earlier.
The Jerusalem Post, which also reported the release, said Levy denied wrongdoing. It said he left after paying a fine of 350,000 dollars, and that he was expected back in Israel early the following week. Between the two accounts, the public facts of that weekend were a name, a four-year detention, a tax case, a medical decline, a fine, and a phone call between the two prime ministers.
Levy’s freedom was a single case, not one of the mass pardons regional governments were announcing the same month. It still mattered in Addis Ababa and in Jerusalem because a foreign national was walking out, and because the contacts ran through the prime ministers rather than only through prison officials. Families waiting for him had a travel window of a few days. The charge he denied, and the fine the Post reported, are the legal terms the June coverage actually put on the record.
Ynet published its account on the evening of 21 June, the day of the release. It named tax evasion as the case and a worsening medical condition as the reason he left custody. The Jerusalem Post supplied the fine and the expectation that he would reach Israel early the next week. The call between Netanyahu and Abiy, placed by the Israeli report a few days before the release, is the diplomatic step that sat alongside the prison decision.
Sources: The Jerusalem Post Ynet