The International Press Institute (IPI) and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) today reiterated their call for the Ethiopian authorities drop terrorism charges against Eskinder Nega and immediately free him from prison, along with other journalists who are currently being held in connection with their work.

While Nega was supposed to have his case reviewed in front of a court on Wednesday, March 27, he and opposition leader Andualem Arage, who was tried for terrorism alongside Nega, will have to wait for a ruling in their appeals process until April 8, Agence France-Presse reported.

On April 1, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released a statement claiming that Nega’s continued detention is a violation of international law, and that the journalist’s rights to free expression and due process had been violated.

Nega is currently serving 18 years in prison for membership in a terrorist organization and for conspiring to commit an act of terrorism. Ironically, his arrest on Sept. 14, 2011 seems to have been an act of retaliation for his criticism of the government’s use of the same anti-terrorism law.

As previous IPI reports emphasized, the current case against Nega is not his first encounter with an arbitrary application of the law. He and his wife, Serkalem Fasil, were jailed for 17 months on treason charges for their reports on the contested election of 2005. Nega was also banned from practicing journalism.

IPI and WAN-IFRA have repeatedly criticized the Ethiopian terrorism legislation of , which is often used to jail and silence journalists and opposition figures.

Besides Nega, two other journalists, Reyot Alemu and Wubshet Taye, are serving 14-year sentences for “conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism” and money laundering – sentences that IPI has also criticized as being retribution for their work as journalists.

Additionally, Yusuf Getachew, former managing editor of the now defunct Islamic magazine Yemuslimoch Guday, was arrested on terrorism charges in July 2012 after a protesters demonstrated against alleged government interference with Muslim religious affairs, Human Rights Watch reported.

In January 2013, Yemuslimoch Guday’s managing editor, Solomon Kebede, was reportedly detained on accusations of inciting terrorism, and may have been questioned about the whereabouts of two former colleagues who went into hiding last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.