New Yorker Fears For Jailed Ethiopian Brother

N E W   Y O R K, June 1 -- Yalem Nega is like so many young people hustling to make it in New York.

She's got a job as a senior financial analyst at a prominent firm. She commutes from Riverdale, N.Y., and has pursued dreams that have taken her far from her birthplace in Ethiopia.

But the memories of her days in Ethiopia are now haunted by the fear she may never see her 43-year-old brother Berhanu again.

Berhanu fled Ethiopia in the political upheaval of the 1970s. He settled and was schooled in the United States, earning his Ph.D. in economics. Yalem came to the United States in 1994, the same year Berhanu returned to Ethiopia with his wife Nardos Minasse.

He took a a job at Addis Ababa University as a professor. Minasse, 38, worked as an optometrist.

Their new life in Ethiopia worked for a while, but for Minasse, the obstacles and security concerns became too much so she returned to the United States with their two children.

Finding Out what Happened

Today, Berhanu Nega sits in an Ethiopian jail charged with inciting a riot and forming a secret, anti-government party last month.

Yalem acknowledges her brother was once a student activist but believes he is innocent of the charges.

"About three weeks ago my brother came to Maryland for a relative's funeral and to see his wife and children for three days. At that time, the government declared that my brother and Professor Mesfin Wolde-Mariam were responsible for instigating the April Addis Ababa university student protest," Yalem told ABCNEWS.com.

"My mother called to beg my brother not to return back home. My brother replied that he had done nothing wrong and insisted on going back to Ethiopia. A week after his return they informed us that he had been arrested."

The family learned that Nega and Wolde-Mariam, a Senior Fulbright Scholar, were picked up by police on what had begun like any other day: Wolde-Mariam, who is in his 70s, was at a café near his home; Nega was working at his office in Addis Ababa.