‘It was almost a relief when someone died’: former prisoners on the torture and terror of Eritrea’s secret prisons

In the darkened office of his church, the preacher recalls how he was tortured. His guards would put a wooden pole behind his bent knees, suspend him upside down from the ceiling and beat the soles of his feet with rubber pipes.
In the two decades before …
‘It was almost a relief when someone died’: former prisoners on the torture and terror of Eritrea’s secret prisons