{"id":219880,"date":"2018-05-11T19:30:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T23:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?p=219880"},"modified":"2019-02-10T09:30:18","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T14:30:18","slug":"dr-fikru-maru-and-30-other-political-prisoners-freed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/219880","title":{"rendered":"Dr Fikru Maru and 30 other political prisoners freed"},"content":{"rendered":"

(AP) – Ethiopia has dropped terrorism and other charges against a Swedish heart surgeon who had been accused of corruption and orchestrating a prison fire, the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency reported Friday.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian-born Fikru Maru has been freed, a prominent blogger and former detainee Befkadu Hailu confirmed to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

The Swedish foreign ministry in March raised Fikru\u2019s case with Ethiopia\u2019s ambassador. The Swedish Embassy declined to comment Friday.<\/p>\n

Fikru\u2019s lawyer in Sweden, Hans Bagner, tells public Swedish radio that \u201cIt\u2019s about time. It has been a long and very strenuous exercise.\u201d His daughter, Emy Maru, told Swedish radio SR that \u201cit does not feel real yet. \u2026 I won\u2019t be fully happy before I have him next to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The doctor was arrested in 2013 after a years-long dispute over equipment for his cardiology clinic in the capital, Addis Ababa. The terrorism charge came years later after he and others were accused of starting a deadly fire in the Qilinto prison where they were held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(AP) – Ethiopia has dropped terrorism and other charges against a Swedish heart surgeon who had been accused of corruption and orchestrating a prison fire, the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency reported Friday. The Ethiopian-born Fikru Maru has been freed, a prominent blogger and former detainee Befkadu Hailu confirmed to The Associated Press. The Swedish foreign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Dr-Fikru-Maru.jpg?fit=632%2C374&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-Vcs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219881,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219880\/revisions\/219881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}