Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-04-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to help free Andargachew Tsige.

James Duddridge

The Government takes the detention and welfare of Mr Andargachew Tsege, who was transferred from Yemen and is imprisoned in Ethiopia, very seriously. The Foreign Secretary, my Rt Hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) has raised Mr Tsege’s case 21 times with his Ethiopian counterpart. I have also raised this case most recently on 8 January. Our focus has been on lobbying for Mr Tsege to have access to a lawyer and a legal route through which he can challenge his detention. We will continue to lobby the Ethiopian government until Mr Tsege is given access to a lawyer, and our concerns about the process by which Mr Tsege was transferred to Ethiopia have been fully addressed.