CSW has learned that the majority of the 177 Eritrean Christians from proscribed churches who were freed from arbitrary detention by the Eritrean government between November 2025 and December 2025 were released conditionally. The group includes students who were arrested while recording worship music for YouTube in April 2023.
According to BBC Tigrinya, the series of conditional releases began on 18 November 2025, when 16 men and three women were freed on bail from a prison in Keren. Then on 3 December 2025, ten men and 16 women were released; 36 members of the Full Gospel Church - 16 men and 20 women - were released on 11 December, and 17 were released on 12 December.
While the prisoners released on 3 December had been detained arbitrarily for three years, most of those released since 11 December had been held in the infamous Mai Serwa Prison for close to five years. Located near the capital city, Asmara, Mai Serwa is notorious for harsh conditions and the use of shipping containers as cells.
The overwhelming majority of these releases were reportedly conditional. To secure their freedom, prisoners were obliged to sign a document confessing to having committed a crime by joining a proscribed denomination, promising not to do so again, and accepting full responsibility for any punishment they face if they disobey.
In May 2002 Eritrea closed all churches not affiliated with the Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran and Orthodox Christian traditions. The authorities also launched an ongoing campaign of arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention which continues to date, with adherents of unrecognised denominations regularly imprisoned indefinitely in inhumane, life-threatening conditions.
This repression also impacts members of permitted religious communities. For example, despite Sunni Islam being one of the four recognised religious traditions, in July 2025 Sheikh Adam Shaban, a respected Muslim cleric and the director of the Quran Memorisation Centre in Ghinda City, was detained arbitrarily, along with Sheikh Hasan Shenetti, after honouring a summons from the authorities, and the centre subsequently was closed down. Days later, the authorities reportedly detained Sheikh Omar Yahya Haji and two of his aides, after he objected to the closure of a Quran Memorisation centre in Qenda’a city.
Religious adherents are among tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience held arbitrarily and indefinitely in more than 300 sites across the country where food, potable water and medical assistance are scarce, and torture occurs routinely. Minors also experience indefinite detention: 8 December 2025 marked 13 years since Ciham Ali, a dual US-Eritrean citizen and the daughter of a former Information Minister, was detained incommunicado, aged 15.
In early December 2025 reports also emerged of the release of 13 detainees from Mai Serwa who had been held arbitrarily for nearly 18 years, including a former Olympian who competed in the 1980 Moscow Games, two businessmen and six senior policemen.
Some Eritrea observers are attributing the releases of Christians in late 2025 to a regular routine in which largely young people who have spent up to three years in prison are freed, making room for further arbitrary arrests. However, other observers speculate that the series of releases, and particularly those of detained Christians, may have been part of an effort by Eritrea to reset relations with the US following the return of the Trump Administration.
In November 2024 the Eritrean leader, Isaias Afwerki, congratulated the US president on his ‘historic comeback’, expressing his hope for ‘a new chapter of fruitful and constructive ties’ between Eritrea and the United States. On 24 May 2025 President Trump congratulated Eritrea on its 34th year of independence, claiming that the US valued ‘the contributions the Government of the State of Eritrea can make to regional security.’ In a subsequent letter to Afewerki dated 30 July 2025, Trump stated he would be ‘reversing the negative, harmful damage of the Biden Administration around the globe’ and reaffirmed his desire for re-engagement. However, in a January 2026 interview Afewerki lamented that ‘certain advisors in Washington seemed intent on blocking this engagement, deliberately or inadvertently, even creating obstacles to spoil the process’.
Meanwhile, there are heightened fears of renewed hostilities between Eritrea and Ethiopia, following repeated high-level calls by Ethiopian officials for access to the Red Sea via the Eritrean port of Assab, Eritrea’s alleged support for insurgents in the Amhara region, and Ethiopia’s support for the Eritrean opposition.
CSW’s Director of Advocacy Dr Khataza Gondwe said: ‘CSW welcomes the releases of so many prisoners who were detained arbitrarily, several of them for excessive periods of time. It is deplorable, however, that so many were only released after being obliged to sign documentation that deprives them of their right to espouse a religion or belief of their choice, and endangers them if they do so. Regrettably, those released constitute a mere fraction of Eritrea’s arbitrarily detained prisoners of conscience, among them senior church leaders and prominent pro-democracy government officials held incommunicado and without trial for over 20 years. We urge Eritrea to go further, and to release Ciham Ali and every other prisoner held without due process. We also urge both Eritrea and Ethiopia to exercise restraint and to refrain from further destabilising an already fragile region.’