Citizens Fleeing Somalia War Sent to Secret Jails in Ethiopia

[Som@li]

by Tina Simpson

 

Kenya, U.S., Ethiopia and The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia are accused by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York based, non-government agency dedicated to protecting human rights of people around the world, of cooperating in the illegal, secret detention of refugees fleeing recent conflict in Somalia.

 

Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director for HRW, states that, "Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone. Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to 'disappear,' and U.S. security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado."

 

In a March 22 letter to the Kenya Ministry of Foreign Affairs, HRW detailed the arbitrary detention, expulsion and apparent enforced disappearance of dozens of individuals who fled the fighting between the Union of Islamic Courts and the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopia between December 2006 and January 2007.

 

Recent research by HRW in Kenya reveals that at least 150 individuals with 19 different nationalities were arrested at border crossings between Somalia and Kenya, and then transferred to Nairobi, where they were held without charge or legal counsel. Eighty-five were then spirited off to Ethiopia on unscheduled, pre-dawn flights in planes chartered by the Kenyan government. U.S. and other national intelligence services have interrogated detainees at various locations in Africa, but say that they were granted access in cooperation with local governments in the war against terror. Human rights lawyers argue that secret deportation is in violation of international law.

 

Flight manifests from the detention flights have been obtained by HRW and the Associated Press in an investigation into missing persons. They show that among the group of deportees, 19 women and 15 children were on these flights to Ethiopia, accompanied by Kenyan police officers.

 

A woman, who was held for 2-1/2 months before being released in Addis Ababa, is the only prisoner who has spoken publicly about her ordeal. The 42-year-old Arabic-Swahili translator, who holds a passport from the United Arab Emirates, was arrested during a business trip to Kenya. She says she was beaten in Kenya, held for 10 days in Somalia with 22 other women and children, before being transferred to Ethiopia on a military plane. There she says, a month after being fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed by U.S. officials, she was set free. She was not allowed to contact her family, lawyer or her own government during her arrest and detention. She has never visited Somalia.

 

Reports say that there is at least one American citizen and "a few" Canadian citizens in the group that has disappeared into Ethiopia. Human rights groups, lawyers, government officials and Western diplomats are working to gain access to these prisoners and to secure their release from these secret jails.

 

"No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia," said Bereket Simon, special advisor to Prime Minister Meles Zanawi. He declined to make any further comments. Ethiopia has a long history of human rights abuses and no laws to contradict it.

 

[me]

American pasport, EU pasports, Canadian pasport don't mean shidddd.

 

People its war and the sooner you get your head out of the sand the better. The things that are happening are just the beginning.

 

So stop crying, Nin ee shantaadu kaa dhicin waysay, sharci kaama dhicinayo.

[N.O.R.F]

God know what is going on behind closed doors. Illahay hausahlo, amiin

[Som@li]

^aamin

 

19 different nationalities, but mainly Somalis

[me]

People this is psychological warfare, its a way of scaring people, especially Somalis in the west.

 

Somalis have been dissapearing in Ethiopian jails as long as I can remmeber. There are so many notorious Ethiopian jails. So lets not pretend this is something new.

 

Ask yourself why are they leaking all this news? Why?

 

Its to scare you folks, to make you a bit angry, but mostly scared so that you won't dare to do anything for your country, its psychologial warfare.

[Alle-ubaahne]

^that is right, absulately, but we have no fear to fear about today.

 

we will do what we have to do for our people, values and country of birth, regardless!

 

Their psychological warfare means nothing to our determinations to live with dignity by defending our values and country against the enemy that is attacking us from the outside!

[BiLaaL]

U.S. officials question Islamists held in Ethiopia

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials have questioned suspected Islamist militants in Ethiopia in hopes of uncovering details about al Qaeda activities in East Africa, officials said on Wednesday.

 

A main focus of the questioning by CIA and FBI agents has been the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and three al Qaeda suspects believed to be in the Horn of Africa.

 

Human rights advocates said scores of Islamists from 18 countries, including the United States, were captured in Kenya while fleeing war-torn Somalia earlier this year and had since become victims of a secret detention program that could erode international support for the U.S. war on terrorism.

 

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said American officials were given access to about 150 suspects in Kenya. The Kenyan government later transferred more than 80 to Somalia, from which many were sent on to be held incommunicado in Ethiopia, the group said.

 

The rights group identified one of the captives as U.S. citizen Amir Mohamed Meshal and said several others were British.

 

A CIA spokesman declined to comment in detail but said U.S. actions were lawful and stressed none of the captives had been in U.S. custody or transferred across international boundaries with U.S. assistance.

 

A federal law enforcement official said the FBI had been given limited access in Kenya and Ethiopia to question fewer than 100 individuals in the past several months as part of its investigation of potential threats and of past terrorist attacks.

 

"They are people detained by foreign governments for possible violations of their law. We have been given the opportunity to talk to these people," the law enforcement official said.

 

Rights advocates contend the United States has had a great deal of influence, saying Kenya appears to have followed the clandestine U.S. practice of detainee transfer known as rendition.

 

"We have very serious concerns that they should have the right to a court. If you don't give them that, then you're losing the war on terrorism," said Omar Jamal of the U.S.-based Somalia Justice Advocacy Center.

 

"It is an open secret to every Somali individual that the U.S. government is heavily involved in this."

 

'USEFUL INFORMATION'

 

A U.S. official familiar with the CIA and FBI interviews in Kenya and Ethiopia said American agents have had limited access to captives "with knowledge of terrorist activities," including the embassy bombings that killed 224 people.

 

"It's been productive. We've received useful information," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

 

U.S. authorities have been searching for three main al Qaeda suspects -- Abu Talha al-Sudani of Sudan, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed of Comoros and Kenyan Saleh Alie Saleh Nabhan -- who were believed to be in Somalia before U.S. and Ethiopian forces began carrying out air strikes on Islamists in Somalia earlier this year.

 

All three are accused of playing a role in the embassy bombings, while Nabhan is also wanted in connection with a 2002 hotel bombing on the Kenyan coast that killed 15 people.

 

U.S. officials believe Sudani could have been killed earlier this year in an Ethiopian air strike but evidence to confirm the death has not been found.

 

US interrogating at Ethiopia's secret prisons

 

Suspects 'detained in Ethiopia'

[Ana_Juwa2]

Another Sid sowed for further division hatred and mistrust.

 

Extrodinary rendetions!

 

Whats the governments Take on this, sorry Gang's take on this? Does it have a take? Does it even know this is happening?

 

Where is the international community, or so-called?

 

What is actually being discussed in Eygpt by the IC, what authority do they have? lead by poddle mubarak and stirred by the US, yet another self-elected representatives of teh voice-less somali people.