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Alem Bekagn (Amharic: ááá á áá, "Farewell to the World"), or 'Kerchele Prison', was a central prison in Ethiopia until 2004. Located in Addis Ababa, the prison possibly existed as early as 1923, under the reign of Empress Zewditu, but became notorious after Second Italo-Ethiopian War as the site where Ethiopian intellectuals were detained and killed by Italian Fascists in the Yekatit 12 massacre. After the restoration of Emperor Haile Selassie, the prison remained in use to house Eritrean nationalists and those involved in the Woyane rebellion. Under the Communist Derg regime that followed, the prison was the site of another mass killing, the Massacre of the Sixty, and of the torture and execution of rival groups in the Red Terror. The prison remained a site of human rights abuses until the Ethiopian Peopleâs Revolutionary Democratic Front entered Addis Ababa on 28 May 1991, after which it became a normal prison.
Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.
Capacity
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Current population
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Occupancy
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Year opened
1923
Closed 2007
Figures from official sources · verified 28 May 2026 · methodology
Operator
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Population held
Mixed/unknown
Opened
1923
Region
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Security level
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Death-row facility
No
No conditions summary available yet.
No visiting information available.
No mailing information available.
Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.
No major issues documented in our database.
Derived signal — not a judgement. How it's calculated
Same country, matched on type + security level where possible.
How many of our profile fields are populated. We surface this so families and researchers know the limits.
Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.
World Prisons. (2026). Alem Bekagn. Retrieved July 21, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/prisons/alem-bekagn
"Alem Bekagn." World Prisons. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/prisons/alem-bekagn.
@misc{worldprisons-alem-bekagn,
author = {{World Prisons}},
title = {Alem Bekagn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://worldprisons.com/prisons/alem-bekagn},
urldate = {2026-07-21}
}