Mr. Ibrahim Saeed, Director General for Relief and Logistics in the Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission (ERREC), has been detained. His arrest took place in the first week of July, immediately after his return from Japan where he had been holding bilateral talks with Japanese officials on facilitating humanitarian assistance to Eritrea.

The government gave no reasons for his arrest.

Mr. Ibrahim Saeed is a long-time EPLF fighter and a veteran of the Eritrean Relief Association (ERA), where he served, among other assignments, as the Association's representative in Sudan in the 1980s.

After Independence, he continued working with its successor organization, the Eritrean Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (ERRA) and, later, with ERREC, which is the government agency that resulted from the merger of ERRA and the Commission for Eritrean Refugee Affairs (CERA).

Mr. Ibrahim Saeed had also served as the general manager of the port of Massawa  and as Director General for Maritime Transport in the Ministry of Transport and Communications.