Located in Addis Ababa, the prison possibly existed as early as 1923, under the reign of Empress Zewditu, but became notorious after Second Italo-Ethiopian War as the site where Ethiopian intellectuals were detained and killed by Italian Fascists in the Yekatit 12 massacre.

Under the Communist Derg regime that followed, the prison was the site of another mass killing, the Massacre of the Sixty, and of the torture and execution of rival groups in the Red Terror.

Many of these were killed in the Massacre of the Sixty on 23 November 1974, including the Prime Ministers Aklilu Habte-Wold and Endalkachew Makonnen and the Ras (Prince) Asrate Kassa.

[1][2] Mengistu Haile Mariam took control of the Derg in 1977, and cemented his position with a campaign of imprisonment and execution known as Qey Shibir or the Ethiopian Red Terror.

[7] The prison was closed in 2004, and on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide that year, plans were presented to the African Union to convert the site into a memorial to human rights abuses.

However, Oqubay was replaced as mayor by Berhane Deressa, who although himself a former prisoner was dedicated to removing traces of the former dictatorships, while the Chinese government offered the AU a gift of a new headquarters on the site.

[5][8] Nothing remains of the prison, but the new AU Conference Center and Office Complex has a small memorial to Alem Bekagn in its northern corner.