Months after the Ethiopia truce, the fate of detained fighters is unknown. Despite a November ceasefire, hundreds of Ethiopian military prisoners remain unaccounted for.
Mebrahtu Tadesse calls himself lucky.
The 22-year-old was a TPLF infantryman in September 2022.
For almost two years, they fought Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal soldiers and allies from Amhara and Eritrea.
According to a 2022 UNHCR assessment, the violence displaced 3.6 million people before a November ceasefire. Seventy thousand more fled to Sudan, which is under strife.
Federal and Tigray governments have not released death tolls. The African Union’s peace talks mediator, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, claimed 600,000 people may have died in the fighting in January.
Tigray is slowly establishing peace over a year after the truce.
The TPLF has been removed from a government “terror list,” and ethnic Tigrayans detained by federal security personnel have been released.
As per the arrangement, Tigray had an interim administration, reestablished telecommunications and transport lines, and surrendered most of its armaments.
War details remain hazy. The fate of hundreds or thousands of Tigrayan fighters and POWs is unknown.
Mebrahtu was wounded in southern Tigray by federal forces. “An officer intervened to save my life,” he told Al Jazeera.
After being transferred between Amhara prisons, he was imprisoned in Awash Arba in the Afar region. Mebrahtu stated jail guards beat his wounded right leg as other POWs died from diarrhea, medical negligence, malnutrition, and torture.
TPLF rebels and Ethiopia signed a truce in Pretoria a month after his arrest. He reported fewer beatings.
His account shows the secrecy surrounding wartime combatants.
Mebrahtu was released from Awash Arba jail on May 5 and taken to Tigray in a 55-truck convoy of ethnic Tigrayan civilians and fighters.
Al Jazeera asked federal government spokesperson Legesse Tulu how many prisoners had been released.
