"In September 2001, when the world's attention was focused on the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York, the president of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, cracked down on critics of his rule, accelerating Eritrea's slide into authoritarianism. Isaias imprisoned 11 members of his government, journalists, and others. Nothing has been heard from the prisoners since. This briefing paper pieces together what Human Rights Watch knows of what happened to the so-called G-15 prisoners: locked up incommunicado in secret prisons. Many of them are feared dead. The paper also describes the wide range of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Isaias regime: arbitrary and indefinite detention; torture; shocking jail conditions; restrictions on freedom of speech, movement, and belief; religious and ethnic persecution; and indefinite conscription and forced labor in national service. The briefing paper calls for the release of all political prisoners, access for independent monitors to Eritrea's jails, and other reforms."--P. [4] of cover.