Seaside centre helps torture victim to health: A blinded Eritrean is being assisted towards recovery at a villa in Torquay. Michael Durham reports

AFTER nearly 10 years in Ethiopian prisons, one victim of political tyranny has found a new life in a villa on the English Riviera.

But Tesfarmarian Zeggai will never see the seaside; he has been blind since a prison beating.

Mr Zeggai, 55, an Eritrean, was tortured, beaten and humiliated. He has been helped towards recovery in Torquay. For the past three months he has lived at an employment and rehabilitation centre run by the Royal National Institution for the Blind, where he has learnt braille, typing and how to use a white stick.

Most of the centre's clients are blind or partially-sighted English people learning to adapt to new jobs. Gill Atter, his training adviser, said: 'This is the first time we have had a torture victim here. He has been wonderful and come on tremendously.' Mr Zeggai, was born in the northern Ethiopian province of Eritrea and became an economic adviser to the United Nations based in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

On 2 March 1982, police arrested him at home. He was accused of assisting the Eritrean People's Liberation Front.

They took him to the Palace Prison, a political jail in the city, where he spent the next two months and 10 days. While there he was drugged and beaten so badly that he lost his sight. He was kept in various prisons for a further nine years.

For most of his imprisonment he received no visits from family or friends and was given no medical treatment. Only towards the end were other prisoners allowed to read books to him. He was told he was under sentence of death.

His rations were three pieces of bread and two cups of tea a day. Later his family was allowed to send food. His wife, Leteselassie Berhe, and daughter, Lula, 16, are in England. A son, Solomon, 20, is studying in Canada. Amnesty International took up his case in 1986.

The United Nations, which continued to pay his salary, put pressure on the authorities to release him. Four days before the fall of the Mengistu regime in May 1991, Mr Zeggai was released and flew to Europe.

He was able to reflect on nearly a decade of ill treatment with remarkable good humour. 'They beat me for two months to try to make me admit to helping the EPLF. When a policeman beats you like that, it shows he knows nothing about you. I denied everything.

'Before I went into prison I suffered from glaucoma. The electric torture and the beating gave me much stress, and it got worse. I had no medical treatment. A year after I was arrested I lost my sight.'

Mr Zeggai is one of hundreds of blind people who have been steered towards a new life by the Manor House centre in Torquay, the only one of its kind in England. Most are sent by the Department of Employment or by social workers. Some have been blind since birth, but others have recently lost their sight or suffer from deteriorating eye disease.

Ms Atter said: 'One of our tasks is to help people to get used to being non-sighted. Teaching independence is very important.

'There are not many blind people who can't work, but persuading an employer to take a blind person on to work on a production line is a different matter. People marvel at how blind people cope, but they're very patronising.'

It costs pounds 700 a week to attend the centre. The Government usually pays about two-thirds, leaving the RNIB to subsidise the rest. The institute says it 'loses' pounds 750,000 a year just to keep the centre open, money that comes from public donations.

Mr Zeggai can now write on a word processor using a computer that 'talks back' to him. It is a painstaking process. He can also read books by using a scanner to convert the printed text.

'When I first came here I couldn't do anything for myself. I couldn't even walk across the room on my own,' Mr Zeggai said. 'In prison, I was used to everything being done for me. I was demoralised and I was completely dependent.

'Now I have found out how to walk and think again. Before coming here, all I knew was that Louis Braille was a Frenchman. Now that I can read, most of all I want to study medieval history, European and modern history.'

Mr Zeggai, whose stay was paid for by the UN, left the Manor House centre yesterday and intends to return to Ethiopia. He would like to continue working for the UN, perhaps in Geneva, New York or London, where the specialist equipment he needs is available. Eventually he intends to return to Eritrea to work for disabled people.

An estimated 90,000 people of working age in Britain are blind or partially sighted. Only one in four has a job.

(Photograph omitted)