Dejen Ande Hishel, the Eritrean pilot who has been incarcerated without charge for over 15 years and broke out from a PFDJ prison in the capital Asmara, March this year, gives an extensive interview to Voice of Assenna, on the nation’s 23rd Independence Day anniversary.

In the interview which is the first since his prison break, the pilot gives a detailed account of his personal and professional background, the problems which are rampant in the Eritrean Air force, his role during the border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia and the condition of his detention and his prison-break.

Although the pilot who was only two when his parents joined the liberation struggle remembers the Ethiopian Army war plane bombardments he had to endure then as the greatest challenge of his childhood, he went on to become the first Eritrean pilot to fly MIG 29 war plane after independence.  Not only that, Dejen Ande Hishel also became the first Eritrean pilot to spend over 15 years of his adult life behind bars. This goes to prove to what extent revolutions in deed sustain themselves by devouring their own sons, as the saying goes.

As demo.archive.assenna.com reported back in March, the pilot’s heroic prison-break out of maximum security prison shows that the regime is at its most vulnerable state and empowers Eritreans to rise to the occasion to take action and bring down dictator Isaias Afewerki’s regime once and for all.