By Tsegaye Tadesse
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Two human rights activists received a two-and-a-half year jail sentence on Wednesday for inciting post-election violence in 2005, but will walk free within days as they have already served their prison time.
An Addis Ababa court found the pair "guilty of inciting violence and uprising against the government".
Their defence lawyer, Mengistu Haile Mariam, confirmed, however, they would be freed quickly.
"The two activists will be released from prison in three days' time because they have already served two-thirds of their sentences," he told reporters at the court.
Daniel Bekele worked for ActionAid, while Netsanet Demissie worked closely with the global anti-poverty campaigner through his Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia.
The two were the last defendants out of 131 originally charged after demonstrators took to the street to protest polls they said were rigged. A parliamentary inquiry said 199 civilians and police were killed and 30,000 people arrested.
The government denied election fraud.
Most of those originally charged were freed earlier in the year after the government published a letter it said opposition leaders had signed admitting their guilt and repenting.
Rights groups condemned the arrests as an attempt by the government to squelch the opposition because of gains it made in the polls, which had been considered Ethiopia's freest.
Both the activists sentenced on Wednesday were involved in deploying observers at polling stations in and around the capital Addis Ababa at the time of the election.
In announcing the sentence -- considerably less than the 10-year maximum -- the court said it had "taken into consideration their efforts to help the 2005 elections be conducted in a fair manner and to help the ongoing process of democracy to succeed."
ActionAid said it would appeal against the verdict in an African Union court given the Ethiopian court's acknowledgement the two had worked to aid democracy in the Horn of Africa nation.
"Praise by the court on the performances of the two activists during the election shows that what they had done was legitimate," said Julian Filochowski, an ActionAid representative. "It's a vote of confidence."
