Senior Eritrean opposition leader dies in Ethiopia

Wednesday 21 December 2005 20:01.

Dec 21, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Seyoum Ogbamichael, the chairman of opposition Eritrean Liberation Front-Revolutionary Council (ELF-RC), died Saturday 17 December in a hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, after a sudden heart failure.

A veteran fighter, Seyoum Ogbamichael’s membership and leadership of Eritrea’s struggle for independence and democracy dates back to Eritrea’s student movement of the 1960s which produced many of Eritrea’s political leadership, including President Isayas Afewerki.

In the early 1970s, Seyoum and others were arrested in Asmara and given a ten-year sentence by the Emperor Haileselassie regime. The activists, who were imprisoned in Adi Kwala, in southern Eritrea, and Asmara, were freed in an Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) raid.

In August 2002, he was elected as the Chairman of the ELF-RC to which he was again re-elected in June 2003 and held it till his death on 17 December 2005.