ASMARA, 21 August 2007 — Standing in a muddy courtyard, 65-year-old Letezai Tewolde-Bahta’s eyes dart back and forth as she stares at a doorway leading to Eritrea’s legal office.

One of thousands of Eritreans deported from Ethiopia during the two countries’ border war of 1998-2000, she opens up a green identity card and points to the granddaughter she says she carried across the front lines.

“The Ethiopians came in the middle of the night and they took us to prison for three days. Then I was deported along with the rest of my family,” said Letezai, who had lived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for 40 years.

“They took everything from us. Then they took us to the border. There must have been 30 buses,” the Eritrean housewife said.

In her weathered hands she holds papers from her past life in Ethiopia — proof, Eritrean lawyers argue, that she was one of 70,000 dual national Eritreans expelled during the war, in which a similar number of people died.

In a peace deal signed in Algiers in 2000, the two countries agreed to submit to binding arbitration by a claims commission and a boundary commission in The Hague.

While the independent boundary commission has made its final decision, the claims commission — set up to assess war damages — has yet to make a final ruling.

In the last few weeks, thousands of Eritreans who lived in Ethiopia before the conflict have lined the streets outside the legal office in Asmara and in other cities across the Horn of Africa nation.

They hope the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission will give them back what they say was stolen by Ethiopia. Many say they have lost all they had — money, homes and businesses — but so far no compensation has been forthcoming.

Ethiopia is also preparing claims for damages against Eritrea at the commission.

While no figures have been released, Eritrea estimated in 2005 its claims could exceed $500 million, or half the country’s gross domestic product for that year. Eritrean lawyers say deportee claims will be the largest.

“It’s important, because so many lost so much. Some of these people lost millions of dollars,” said lawyer Ruta Ghebremichael, 23.

The Commission has yet to receive all the financial claims from either side and is not expected to rule on how much should be paid until some time next year.

Wearing an Adidas jacket and US college basketball hat, Melake Yhidego, 40, enters a tiny office in a run-down one-story building next to Eritrea’s legal office.