Observers say the lawyer, also known to have defended the case of six army generals who were involved in a failed coup to oust former military dictator Col. Mengistu Haile-Mariam in 1989, was sent to jail after Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), to which he is vice president, accused the regime of Meles Zenawi of fomenting ethnic violence in Gambella region in which over 300 people were killed in December and January this year.

Government forces were heavily involved in the Anuak genocide, although the state tried to shift the blame to other armed insurgents in the country. The state-owned media on its part reported some 60 people were killed in the massacre, which EHRCO and other independent sources dismissed the report as misleading and put the number of victims well over 300.

"Placing the lawyer behind bars over trumped-up charges is a stark warning to those professionals who fail to toe government lines of repression," a political analyst said. "This is clearly a punitive measure to intimidate the country's human rights activists."

Abebe, now serving a 20-day jail sentence, was also defense lawyer for Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, a dogged human rights activist who has been in and out of prison in the course of heading the country's only human rights watchdog - EHRCO.