Of course this has been in the public domain for some time now. What’s new though is the fact main stream American media are picking it up and talking about it in a negative light. Ethiopia is a weak client state that’s enticed, and at times coerced, to do Bush’s dirty work in the region. In my estimate, things will not be favorable for her after Bush’s term. These types of practices are universally condemned, and domestic American voices against it are getting stronger. The more coverage Ethiopia’s role and practice gets, the clearer it becomes for the average, and lazy at that, American congressmenwomen what Ethiopia’s current regime is up to. edit: if you live in America and you are a US citezen, you may want to forward this to your congressman/woman. Educate them about these horrendous human suffering that this administration exacted on the poor/innocent people of the Horn.

Of course this has been in the public domain for some time now. What’s new though is the fact main stream American media are picking it up and talking about it in a negative light. Ethiopia is a weak client state that’s enticed, and at times coerced, to do Bush’s dirty work in the region. In my estimate, things will not be favorable for her after Bush’s term. These types of practices are universally condemned, and domestic American voices against it are getting stronger. The more coverage Ethiopia’s role and practice gets, the clearer it becomes for the average, and lazy at that, American congressmenwomen what Ethiopia’s current regime is up to. edit: if you live in America and you are a US citezen, you may want to forward this to your congressman/woman. Educate them about these horrendous human suffering that this administration exacted on the poor/innocent people of the Horn.

U.S. agents eye secret prisons in Ethiopia CIA, FBI agents looking for al-Qaida militants at notorious Ethiopia jails. The Associated Press Updated: 7:58 p.m. CT April 3, 2007 NAIROBI, Kenya - CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families. The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen, and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP. Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland. Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa. U.S. government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism. The prisoners were never in American custody, said an FBI spokesman, Richard Kolko, who denied the agency would support or be party to illegal arrests. He said U.S. agents were allowed limited access by governments in the Horn of Africa to question prisoners as part of the FBI’s counter-terrorism work. Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida. An 'outsourced Guantanamo' But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation. John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, went further. He said in an e-mail that the United States has acted as “ringleader” in what he labeled a “decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo.” Details of the arrests, transfers and interrogations slowly emerged as AP and human rights groups investigated the disappearances, diplomats tracked their missing citizens and the first detainees to be released told their stories. One investigator from an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media, said Ethiopia had secret jails at three locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; an Ethiopian air base 37 miles east of the capital; and the far eastern desert close to the Somali border. More than 100 arrests in January More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials. Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children. In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says. A further 200 people, also captured in Somalia, were mainly Ethiopian rebels who backed the Somali Islamist movement, according to one rights group and a Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job. Those prisoners also were taken to Ethiopia, human rights groups say. Kenya continues to arrest hundreds of people for illegally crossing over from Somalia. But it is not clear if deportations continue. The Pentagon announced last week that one Kenyan al-Qaida suspect who fled Somalia, Mohamed Abul Malik, was arrested and flown to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ethiopia denying secret prisoners When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials. “No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further. A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story. “It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2½ months in detention without charge. She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country. She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane. Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said. More families speak out In a telephone conversation with AP, Tuweni said the man identified himself as a U.S. official, but not from the FBI. A CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the agency had no contact with Tuweni. “We cried the whole time because we did not know what would happen. The whole thing was very scary,” said Tuweni, who flew back to her family in Dubai a day after her release. Tuweni’s version of her transfer out of Kenya is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. It shows she was taken to Mogadishu, Somalia, with 31 other people on an unscheduled flight chartered by the Kenyan government. The family of a Swedish detainee, 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, said she was freed from Ethiopia on March 27 and arrived home the following day. Benaouda had traveled to Somalia with her fiancé but fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said. “She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she’s lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds),” her mother, Helena Benaouda, a 47-year-old Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council, wrote on a Web site she set up to help secure her daughter’s release. “She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet.” The mother spoke briefly by telephone with AP, saying any information she had was being posted on the Web site. She declined to make her daughter available for an interview. According to the Web site, an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints of detainees. It said the teenager was never charged or allowed access to lawyers. The teen was also concerned about a 7-month-old baby that was in detention with her, the Web site said. One American among detainees The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia. U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal’s transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department. He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status. An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was “disgusted” by Meshal’s deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal. “My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi a-hole, but the precedent of ’deporting’ U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one,” the official quoted the memo as saying. Like Benaouda, Meshal was arrested fleeing Somalia. A Kenyan police report of Meshal’s arrest obtained by AP says he was carrying an assault rifle and had crossed into Kenyan with armed Arab men who were trying to avoid capture. Meshal’s parents insist he is innocent and called on the U.S. government to win his release. “My son’s only crime is that he’s a Muslim, an American Muslim,” his father, Mohamed Meshal, said from the family’s two-story home on a cul-de-sac in Tinton Falls, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Fifi. “Clearly the U.S. government interrogated him, and threatened him with torture according to the accounts that we’ve seen,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law who has been assisting the family. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday to demand Meshal’s immediate release. “Our government cannot allow an American citizen to continue to be held by the Ethiopian government in violation of international law and our own due process,” he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of the Geneva Conventions that protect victims of war, is seeking access to the Ethiopian detainees, said a diplomat from a country whose citizens are being held. He insisted on speaking anonymously because he is working for their release. U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss the detentions only if not quoted by name because of the information’s sensitivity, said Ethiopia had allowed access to U.S. agencies, including the CIA and FBI, but the agencies played no role in arrests, transport or deportation. One official said it would have been irresponsible to pass up an opportunity to learn more about terrorist operations. Kolko, the FBI spokesman, also said the detainees were never in FBI or U.S. government custody. “While in custody of the foreign government, the FBI was granted limited access to interview certain individuals of interest,” he told AP. “We do not support or participate in any system that illegally detains foreign fighters or terror suspects, including women and children.” Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to discuss details of any such interviews. He said, however: “To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to.” One of the U.S. officials said the FBI has had access in Ethiopia to several dozen individuals — fewer than 100 — as part of its investigations. 1998 bombings a focal point The official said the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds are a major focus of the agents’ work. Law enforcement officials have long believed the bombings were carried out by members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network who were later given safe haven in Somalia. The official said FBI agents would not be witness or party to any questioning that involved abuse. It wasn’t clear how many people the CIA interviewed or whether the agency’s officers were working jointly with the FBI. The CIA began an aggressive program in 2002 to interrogate suspected terrorists at an unknown number of secret locations from Southeast Asia to Europe. Prisoners were frequently picked up in one country and transferred to a prison in another, where they were held incommunicado by a cooperative intelligence service. But President Bush announced in September that all the detainees had been moved to military custody at Guantanamo Bay. One Western diplomat, who refused to be quoted by name for fear of hurting relations with the countries involved, would not rule out that additional suspects in Ethiopia could be sent to Guantanamo. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua insisted no laws were broken and said his government was not aware that anyone would be transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia. Lawyers and human rights groups argue the covert transfers to Ethiopia violated international law. “Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and U.S. security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado.” © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

U.S. agents eye secret prisons in Ethiopia CIA, FBI agents looking for al-Qaida militants at notorious Ethiopia jails. The Associated Press Updated: 7:58 p.m. CT April 3, 2007 NAIROBI, Kenya - CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families. The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen, and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP. Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland. Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa. U.S. government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism. The prisoners were never in American custody, said an FBI spokesman, Richard Kolko, who denied the agency would support or be party to illegal arrests. He said U.S. agents were allowed limited access by governments in the Horn of Africa to question prisoners as part of the FBI’s counter-terrorism work. Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida. An 'outsourced Guantanamo' But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation. John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, went further. He said in an e-mail that the United States has acted as “ringleader” in what he labeled a “decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo.” Details of the arrests, transfers and interrogations slowly emerged as AP and human rights groups investigated the disappearances, diplomats tracked their missing citizens and the first detainees to be released told their stories. One investigator from an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media, said Ethiopia had secret jails at three locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; an Ethiopian air base 37 miles east of the capital; and the far eastern desert close to the Somali border. More than 100 arrests in January More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials. Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children. In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says. A further 200 people, also captured in Somalia, were mainly Ethiopian rebels who backed the Somali Islamist movement, according to one rights group and a Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job. Those prisoners also were taken to Ethiopia, human rights groups say. Kenya continues to arrest hundreds of people for illegally crossing over from Somalia. But it is not clear if deportations continue. The Pentagon announced last week that one Kenyan al-Qaida suspect who fled Somalia, Mohamed Abul Malik, was arrested and flown to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ethiopia denying secret prisoners When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials. “No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further. A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story. “It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2½ months in detention without charge. She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country. She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane. Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said. More families speak out In a telephone conversation with AP, Tuweni said the man identified himself as a U.S. official, but not from the FBI. A CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the agency had no contact with Tuweni. “We cried the whole time because we did not know what would happen. The whole thing was very scary,” said Tuweni, who flew back to her family in Dubai a day after her release. Tuweni’s version of her transfer out of Kenya is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. It shows she was taken to Mogadishu, Somalia, with 31 other people on an unscheduled flight chartered by the Kenyan government. The family of a Swedish detainee, 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, said she was freed from Ethiopia on March 27 and arrived home the following day. Benaouda had traveled to Somalia with her fiancé but fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said. “She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she’s lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds),” her mother, Helena Benaouda, a 47-year-old Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council, wrote on a Web site she set up to help secure her daughter’s release. “She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet.” The mother spoke briefly by telephone with AP, saying any information she had was being posted on the Web site. She declined to make her daughter available for an interview. According to the Web site, an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints of detainees. It said the teenager was never charged or allowed access to lawyers. The teen was also concerned about a 7-month-old baby that was in detention with her, the Web site said. One American among detainees The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia. U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal’s transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department. He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status. An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was “disgusted” by Meshal’s deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal. “My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi a-hole, but the precedent of ’deporting’ U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one,” the official quoted the memo as saying. Like Benaouda, Meshal was arrested fleeing Somalia. A Kenyan police report of Meshal’s arrest obtained by AP says he was carrying an assault rifle and had crossed into Kenyan with armed Arab men who were trying to avoid capture. Meshal’s parents insist he is innocent and called on the U.S. government to win his release. “My son’s only crime is that he’s a Muslim, an American Muslim,” his father, Mohamed Meshal, said from the family’s two-story home on a cul-de-sac in Tinton Falls, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Fifi. “Clearly the U.S. government interrogated him, and threatened him with torture according to the accounts that we’ve seen,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law who has been assisting the family. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday to demand Meshal’s immediate release. “Our government cannot allow an American citizen to continue to be held by the Ethiopian government in violation of international law and our own due process,” he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of the Geneva Conventions that protect victims of war, is seeking access to the Ethiopian detainees, said a diplomat from a country whose citizens are being held. He insisted on speaking anonymously because he is working for their release. U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss the detentions only if not quoted by name because of the information’s sensitivity, said Ethiopia had allowed access to U.S. agencies, including the CIA and FBI, but the agencies played no role in arrests, transport or deportation. One official said it would have been irresponsible to pass up an opportunity to learn more about terrorist operations. Kolko, the FBI spokesman, also said the detainees were never in FBI or U.S. government custody. “While in custody of the foreign government, the FBI was granted limited access to interview certain individuals of interest,” he told AP. “We do not support or participate in any system that illegally detains foreign fighters or terror suspects, including women and children.” Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to discuss details of any such interviews. He said, however: “To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to.” One of the U.S. officials said the FBI has had access in Ethiopia to several dozen individuals — fewer than 100 — as part of its investigations. 1998 bombings a focal point The official said the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds are a major focus of the agents’ work. Law enforcement officials have long believed the bombings were carried out by members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network who were later given safe haven in Somalia. The official said FBI agents would not be witness or party to any questioning that involved abuse. It wasn’t clear how many people the CIA interviewed or whether the agency’s officers were working jointly with the FBI. The CIA began an aggressive program in 2002 to interrogate suspected terrorists at an unknown number of secret locations from Southeast Asia to Europe. Prisoners were frequently picked up in one country and transferred to a prison in another, where they were held incommunicado by a cooperative intelligence service. But President Bush announced in September that all the detainees had been moved to military custody at Guantanamo Bay. One Western diplomat, who refused to be quoted by name for fear of hurting relations with the countries involved, would not rule out that additional suspects in Ethiopia could be sent to Guantanamo. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua insisted no laws were broken and said his government was not aware that anyone would be transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia. Lawyers and human rights groups argue the covert transfers to Ethiopia violated international law. “Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and U.S. security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado.” © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

U.S. agents eye secret prisons in Ethiopia CIA, FBI agents looking for al-Qaida militants at notorious Ethiopia jails. The Associated Press Updated: 7:58 p.m. CT April 3, 2007 NAIROBI, Kenya - CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families. The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen, and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP. Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland. Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa. U.S. government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism. The prisoners were never in American custody, said an FBI spokesman, Richard Kolko, who denied the agency would support or be party to illegal arrests. He said U.S. agents were allowed limited access by governments in the Horn of Africa to question prisoners as part of the FBI’s counter-terrorism work. Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida. An 'outsourced Guantanamo' But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation. John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, went further. He said in an e-mail that the United States has acted as “ringleader” in what he labeled a “decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo.” Details of the arrests, transfers and interrogations slowly emerged as AP and human rights groups investigated the disappearances, diplomats tracked their missing citizens and the first detainees to be released told their stories. One investigator from an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media, said Ethiopia had secret jails at three locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; an Ethiopian air base 37 miles east of the capital; and the far eastern desert close to the Somali border. More than 100 arrests in January More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials. Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children. In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says. A further 200 people, also captured in Somalia, were mainly Ethiopian rebels who backed the Somali Islamist movement, according to one rights group and a Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job. Those prisoners also were taken to Ethiopia, human rights groups say. Kenya continues to arrest hundreds of people for illegally crossing over from Somalia. But it is not clear if deportations continue. The Pentagon announced last week that one Kenyan al-Qaida suspect who fled Somalia, Mohamed Abul Malik, was arrested and flown to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ethiopia denying secret prisoners When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials. “No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further. A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story. “It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2½ months in detention without charge. She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country. She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane. Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said. More families speak out In a telephone conversation with AP, Tuweni said the man identified himself as a U.S. official, but not from the FBI. A CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the agency had no contact with Tuweni. “We cried the whole time because we did not know what would happen. The whole thing was very scary,” said Tuweni, who flew back to her family in Dubai a day after her release. Tuweni’s version of her transfer out of Kenya is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. It shows she was taken to Mogadishu, Somalia, with 31 other people on an unscheduled flight chartered by the Kenyan government. The family of a Swedish detainee, 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, said she was freed from Ethiopia on March 27 and arrived home the following day. Benaouda had traveled to Somalia with her fiancé but fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said. “She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she’s lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds),” her mother, Helena Benaouda, a 47-year-old Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council, wrote on a Web site she set up to help secure her daughter’s release. “She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet.” The mother spoke briefly by telephone with AP, saying any information she had was being posted on the Web site. She declined to make her daughter available for an interview. According to the Web site, an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints of detainees. It said the teenager was never charged or allowed access to lawyers. The teen was also concerned about a 7-month-old baby that was in detention with her, the Web site said. One American among detainees The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia. U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal’s transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department. He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status. An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was “disgusted” by Meshal’s deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal. “My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi a-hole, but the precedent of ’deporting’ U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one,” the official quoted the memo as saying. Like Benaouda, Meshal was arrested fleeing Somalia. A Kenyan police report of Meshal’s arrest obtained by AP says he was carrying an assault rifle and had crossed into Kenyan with armed Arab men who were trying to avoid capture. Meshal’s parents insist he is innocent and called on the U.S. government to win his release. “My son’s only crime is that he’s a Muslim, an American Muslim,” his father, Mohamed Meshal, said from the family’s two-story home on a cul-de-sac in Tinton Falls, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Fifi. “Clearly the U.S. government interrogated him, and threatened him with torture according to the accounts that we’ve seen,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law who has been assisting the family. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday to demand Meshal’s immediate release. “Our government cannot allow an American citizen to continue to be held by the Ethiopian government in violation of international law and our own due process,” he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of the Geneva Conventions that protect victims of war, is seeking access to the Ethiopian detainees, said a diplomat from a country whose citizens are being held. He insisted on speaking anonymously because he is working for their release. U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss the detentions only if not quoted by name because of the information’s sensitivity, said Ethiopia had allowed access to U.S. agencies, including the CIA and FBI, but the agencies played no role in arrests, transport or deportation. One official said it would have been irresponsible to pass up an opportunity to learn more about terrorist operations. Kolko, the FBI spokesman, also said the detainees were never in FBI or U.S. government custody. “While in custody of the foreign government, the FBI was granted limited access to interview certain individuals of interest,” he told AP. “We do not support or participate in any system that illegally detains foreign fighters or terror suspects, including women and children.” Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to discuss details of any such interviews. He said, however: “To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to.” One of the U.S. officials said the FBI has had access in Ethiopia to several dozen individuals — fewer than 100 — as part of its investigations. 1998 bombings a focal point The official said the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds are a major focus of the agents’ work. Law enforcement officials have long believed the bombings were carried out by members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network who were later given safe haven in Somalia. The official said FBI agents would not be witness or party to any questioning that involved abuse. It wasn’t clear how many people the CIA interviewed or whether the agency’s officers were working jointly with the FBI. The CIA began an aggressive program in 2002 to interrogate suspected terrorists at an unknown number of secret locations from Southeast Asia to Europe. Prisoners were frequently picked up in one country and transferred to a prison in another, where they were held incommunicado by a cooperative intelligence service. But President Bush announced in September that all the detainees had been moved to military custody at Guantanamo Bay. One Western diplomat, who refused to be quoted by name for fear of hurting relations with the countries involved, would not rule out that additional suspects in Ethiopia could be sent to Guantanamo. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua insisted no laws were broken and said his government was not aware that anyone would be transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia. Lawyers and human rights groups argue the covert transfers to Ethiopia violated international law. “Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and U.S. security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado.” © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Geeljirow, Baashi waa taliyey! There is no reason to resort to violence if Ethiopians are withdrawn. If the Ethiopians are still on Somali soil, however, violence will remain a legitimate tool to resist and oppose their presence. Now what Baashi is saying, if I read him right, is that the muqaawamah needs to state that in principle violence is not their preferred means to achieve political goals; that they understand and appreciate Somalis are tired of wars and need peace and the return of governance; that they are willing to allow a compromised deal in the interim to get this country out of its current state; and that, provided that Ethiopia withdraws, they are ready to swallow their pride and concede for the common good. That’s how I read him. And with that, I agree. There is no contradiction in renouncing violence, on a one hand, as a means to reach your goals if there are other recourses to attain the same exact objectives, and insisting on the continuation of armed insurgency if certain conditions are not met, on the other hand. As a side note let me say this: I hate waxing eloquent on the brutal clarity of war, but if Ethiopian forces continue to remain on Somali soil nothing short of violence, I hold, will secure their abrupt withdrawal. War, more war, and more war is the only logical answer to such a naked aggression of Ethiopia and its backers to subdue a genuine movement that not only enjoyed, and still enjoys, an unprecedented popular support from wide spectrum of Somalis, but also succeeded in returning a large portion of Somalia’s troubled south to normalcy and peace. Death, mass and forced exodus, and other human sufferings are the virtues of war but if the alternative is living under Ethiopia's brutal occupation, fighting and resisting becomes a legitimate tool to make one’s own point.

Many thanks yaa Baashi! At this juncture of our crisis, Ethiopia must withdraw from our soil. To avoid utter collapse of the tfg or further plunging deep into the civil war, I would suggest the following. 1- Ceasefire 2- Ethiopia withdraws 3- Tfg relocates (for its own security---there is just too much blood shed in Mogadishu) 4- Reconciliation conference commences Things I would have the reconciliation gathering address are: 1- The role of Islamic Court’s leaders 2- Civil war grievances i.e. properties... ….Halkaasaan la mari lahaa.

Not untill a man like Sayid emerges from the current rubble... Sayyid Abdullah Hassan and his favourite horse Hiin-Faniin!

lol@borderka dhankuu ka taagan yahay. Jiimcaale, you see, good Che alerted me before but i thought, after what happened in Mogadishu, Khalaf would call spade a spade and see these events for what they are. No matter.

This is rubbish!

^^Does it really matter who ‘s resisting Ethiopia’s presence in the capital? Aside from your rhetorical question, I gather you are only fond of doing hindsight commentary and not ready to face the political reality that stares at you in the face. Scale your thoughts then, I say.

Jeelle is irrelevant. So is Gacmadheere. Here is Gacmadheere complaining about certain elders not talking to him, and instead talking to the Ethiopian Generals. Odayaasha Beesha ****** oo lagu eedeeyay in ay ka meer meerayaan in ay toos ula hadlaan Dowladda Federaalka . Talaado, April 03, 2007(HOL): Wasiirka Arrimaha Gudaha Xukuumadda Federaalka Soomaaliya Maxamed Maxamuud Guuleed Gacmadheere ayaa Odayaasha Beelaha ****** ee ka soo horjeeda Dowladda Federaalka ku eedeeyay in ay ka meer meerayaan in ay la hadlaan Dowladda Federaalka, wuxuuna taasi ku tilmaamay mid aan xal lagu keeneynin. Wasiirka waxaa uu sheegay in ay odayaasha sheegaan mar kasta in ay heshiis la gelayaan Saraakiisha Ciidamada Itoobiya ee ku sugan Magaalada Muqdisho, “Waxay sheegeen in ay la heshiinayaan Saraakiil Itoobiyaan ah, waxaan leenahay haddii ay meel wax la dhigan karaan Itoobiyaanka hala dhigteen”ayuu yiri Gacmadheere oo intaas ku daray in ay dhowr jeer Idaacadaha ka hadleen Odayaal sheegay in aysan aqoonsaneyn Dowladda Federaalka, taasina ay u arkayaan mid wax isku soo dhaweyneynin. Wasiirka Arrimaha Gudaha waxaa uu sheegay in ay dhowr jeer oo hore ay u yeereen Odayaasha wax ka tabanaya, balse ay Odayaashu ka diideen in ay u yimaadaan, “Annagu weli sidii ayaan ugu jeedineynaa codsigii ahaa in ay noo yimaadaan oo ay noo sheegaan waxa ay naga tabanayaan”ayuu yiri Gacma-dheere. Odayaal ka soo jeeda Beelaha ****** ayaa horay waxay u sheegeen in ay heshiis la gaareen Saraakiil Itoobiyaan ah oo ku sugan Magaalada Muqdisho, iyadoo heshiiskaas oo ahaa mid xabad joojin ahna uu buray kadib markii ay Ciidamada Itoobiya Muqdisho ka bilaabeen howlgallo. Magaalada Muqdisho waxaa ka dhacay dagaallo socday afar maalmood kuwaasi oo ay ku dhinteen dad ku dhow 400 oo ruux, kuwaasi oo u badnaa dad rayid ah, iyadoo ay jiraan dad kale oo dagaalka ku dhawaacmay iyo kuwo ku barakacay. Haatan dagaal kama jiro magaalada Muqdisho balse xili kasta ayuu dib u qarxi karaa waayo waxaa sidoodii isu horfadhiya dhinacyadii dagaalka iskala soo horjeeday. Si kastaba arrintu ha ahaatee, waxgarad badan oo Soomaaliyeed ayaa waxay qabaan in ay si toos ah u wada hadlaan dhinacyada Dowladda Federaalka iyo Hoggaamiyayaasha Beelaha ee ka soo horjeeda, si loo baajiyo in ay dhacaan dagaallo kale oo lagu hoobto, walow ay labada dhinac ee ku loolamaya gacan ku heynta Muqdisho ay u muuqdaan kuwo aan sii kala jeeda oo aan rabin in ay xal gaaraan. Salaad Iidow Xasan (Xiis), Hiiraan Online

^^Now that they are there, regardless of what pretext they used to invade us, what do you think should be done about them yaa Khalaf? ps--forget about icu for a second, will ye?

Paragon et al, I think it will take some time before another battle starts. Xamar is relatively quite today. Shirkii ay Muqdisho ku yeesheen Odayaasha Beesha ****** iyo Saraakiisha Itoobiya oo heshiis hordhac ah lagu gaaray. Talaado, April 03, 2007(HOL): Shir ay galabta ku yeesheen magaalada Muqdisho Guddi ay magacaabeen Odayaasha Beesha ****** iyo Saraakiil Itoobiyaan ah, kuwaasi oo ka wada arinsanayay sidii loo joojin lahaa dagaalladii Muqdisho ka socday ayaa lagu gaaray heshiis hordhac ah. Shirka ay labada dhinac yeesheen oo socady muddo seddex saacadood ah ayaa dood dheer kadib waxay labada dhinac soo saareen labo qodob oo kala ah in la sii adkeeyo xabad joojin ay labada dhinac horay u gaareen iyo in la aaso maalinta berri ah meydadka daadsan xaafadihii dagaallada ka dhaceen, iyadoo fulinta qodobkanina loo xil saaray guddo min labo xubnood ah oo labada dhinac kala metelaya. Sidoo kalena labada dhinac waxay isku af-garteen in 5ta bishan ay shir kale isugu yimaadaan, isla markaana ay sii amba qaadaan heshiiska ay wada gareen iyo qodobada kale ee horyaala, iyadoo ay xusid mudan tahay in ay labada dhinac aad isugu adkeeyeen in ay is-aaminaan. Heshiiskan hordhaca ah ee ay wada gaareen labada dhinac ayaa wuxuu ku soo beegmayaa iyadoo ay magaalada Muqdisho ka dhaceen dagaallo lagu hoobtay oo u dhaxeeyay Ciidamada Itoobiya iyo Kooxo hubeysan oo ka soo horjeeda, waxaana heshiiskan uu rajo geliyay dadka Muqdisho oo iyagu aad ugu haraadan nabad iyo in ay ka dhamaadaan dagaallada ay waxyeellada ka soo gaareyso. Sidoo kalena shirka ay wada yeesheen Guddiga ka socday Odayaasha Beesha ****** iyo Saraakiisha Itoobiya ayaa wuxuu yahay mid aan looga hadlin shuruudo ay labada dhinac isku xirayeen oo ay ka mid yihiin in ay Ciidamada Itoobiyaanka fariisimadooda dib ugu laabtaan, taasi oo ka imaaneysay dhinaca Odayaasha Beesha ****** iyo in ay Ciidamada Itoobiyaanka doonayaan in ay sii wadaan howlgalka, isla markaana ay guryaha baaraan. Si kastaba arrintu ha ahaatee, heshiiskan ay labada dhinac wada gaareen ayaa ah mid aaney qeyb ka ahayn Dowladda Federaalka oo iyada la sheego inay u yeeratay Ciidamada Itoobiya, sidaas darteedna waxay dad badan shaki ka muujinayaan in uu dhaqangalo heshiiska ay wada gaareen Odayaasha ****** iyo Saraakiisha Itoobiya.

Faarax, actually I stayed late today here. Yeelay adeer. Salaamaat to all!

Horn, and you are back! Perhaps to celebrate for uncle Hiiraale can now come out from hiding and claim his post? Duke, lets leave at aa la tahay comment, shall we?

Captain, that you are fascinated with war drills and appreciate the sheer power of its machinery is a point that you’ve made many times. Don’t be a broken record now as you need not to repeat yourself adeer. You see Aydiid too was fascinated with the art of killing and how his massive army succeeded driving millions of Somalis from their homes. His concern was liquidating what he thought was an obstacle for peace and stable Somalia. The legacy: the man died in small skirmishes between his sub-sub-clans and left behind a political landscape laden with tribal feuds. Chew that for a second you cyuber hero. NN, war is inevitable in the current Somali state. And that entails more death and destruction. For the other cheerleaders: war is not over yet. There may be peace for some weeks or even some months. But it’s war that awaits Somalia and Somalis. I dont like it. I pray for Allah to show us ways to avoid it. But as far as I can tell, it's war.

Duke,this time, let me try you with a reer-bari terse: aa la tahay!

A case of a rocking throne, is it not?

Taako, you really need to speak like the Captain does in these boards; condone the death and the destruction that’s befallen on Xamar. Don’t mince words adeer. After all, those killed were from the enemy clan. So it’s not about grasping simple English. It’s indeed struggling to speak with a clear voice to reflect your wicked thoughts. Thats your sorry state! As for the cyber Captain; remember few months ago when it was all over and done and Xamar was to be made a stable seat for the tfg. Your predictions are no different this time. There will be another eruption of violence. The tfg is doomed to fail. And if it’s the clan you were after, there is a recorded history in Somali politics where bigger army than yours went after specific clans to subdue them. If it’s the insurgency you were after, again history is full of instances where even superpowers were brought to their knees and defeated squarely.

Civilians caught in the crossfire are simply naïve. So says one of SOL’s notorious simpletons.

More is to come as some are walking with death. Those who are dancing and singing victory songs on the decomposing body of the innocent civilians will be held on to account.

I dont think this truce will hold. It's all about buying time for both sides.

^^Daynile puts the death toll about 500. Dadkii ugu badnaa oo rayid ah oo lagu xasuuqay 4tii maalin ee dagaalada ka jireen magaalada Muqdisho (xaafadaha ugu badan ay dadkaasi rayidka ah ay ku geeriyoodeen . Muqdisho Dadkii ugu badnaa abid ayaa ku geeriyooday Afartii maalin ee dagaalada ka jireen magaalada Muqdisho kuwaas oo kor u dhafayo 500 oo qof iaydoona dadka la xasuuqay aysan jirin cid si qaas ah ugu dacwooneysa marka laga reebo qareemo si qaas ah isku xilqaamay Shaqsiyaadka dhintay oo ubadan dad rayid ah oo guroyahooda si gar daro loogu duqeeyey , dadka dhintay oo ku kala dhintay meelo badan oo ku yaalo magaalada Muqdisho ayaa maanta guryahooda laga soo faagay iyadoona qaarkood go go eeny hilibkoodii , Intbadan dadka dhintay oo ku geeriyooday xaafadaha kala , Shiirkolaha , Gubta , Huruwaa , Ceymiska , Toowfiiq , Xararyaale, Suuq bacaad iyo Meelo kale oo badan , Xaafada Shirkoole waxaa ku geeriyooday in kabadan 132 qof oo rayid ah , Xaafada Huruwaa 82 qof oo rayid ah , xaafada Gubta 79 Qof oo rayid ah Ceymiska 52 Qof oo rayid ah , Toowfiikh 100 Qof oo rayid ah xaafada Xararyaale 42 qof oo rayid ah iyo xafada Suuqbacaad 13 qof oo rayid ah isku geynta dadka rayidka ah oo gar darada ku dhintay ayaa ah 500 oo qof iyadoonta tirakoobkaasi ay maanta sameyeen dad si qaas ah isku xilqaamay kuwaas oo diyaarinooyo dacwad ka dhan ah DFKMG iyo dowlada Itoobiya. Xasuuqa ka dhacay Muqdisho ayaa ahaa kii ugu badnaa abid ee dad intaas la eg ay ku geeriyoodaan mar qur ah.

shariif speaks