Amnesty appeals for Muslim detainees in Ethiopia

By Andrew Cawthorne NAIROBI, May 24 (Reuters) - Scores of those rounded up by Kenya after a New Year conflict in Somalia remain "arbitrarily detained" in Ethiopia where they were sent for interrogation, Amnesty International said on Thursday. In a case some rights campaigners have dubbed an "African Guantanamo", the British-based group called on Kenyan, Somali and Ethiopian authorities to come clean over the whereabouts and fates of some 66 Muslim detainees unaccounted for in Ethiopia. They were picked up in Kenya in January and February after a two-week war that saw allied Ethiopian-Somali troops oust militant Islamists from Mogadishu and push many of their fighters south and across the border, it said. A total of 85 people were "unlawfully" sent from Kenya to Ethiopia via Somalia, but 19 have been released, Amnesty said. "They became victims of rendition -- transferred in secret from one country to another outside any legal process. Amnesty International believes that most are still arbitrarily detained in Ethiopia," it said in a report sent to Reuters. Addis Ababa denies reports of mistreatment of suspects, who come from around 20 different nations. "I was bewildered by these assertions," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Reuters in a recent interview. "Those who have been released have clearly stated they were not mistreated." Ethiopia says that of 41 foreign suspects it acknowledges detaining in the aftermath of the Somalia war, 12 were being kept in jail while the rest had been or were being released. Meles likened the 12 to "a United Nations of Islamists". ETHIOPIA LIKENED TO U.S. Amnesty said the 66 were either in Ethiopian jails or at unknown locations. "While in custody in Ethiopia, the detainees were questioned by U.S. agents," it added. "Former detainees have alleged that several were tortured or otherwise ill-treated." Two of the women being held have given birth behind bars, Amnesty said, while another -- Halima Badrudine Hussein, wife of suspected al Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed -- was being held with her three small children. Canadian national Bashir Ahmed Maktal, a native of Ethiopia's Ogaden region who emigrated in 1991, has been under pressure to "confess" on TV to involvement with the separatist rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front, Amnesty said. A U.S. citizen of Egyptian origin, Amir Meshal, "remains in incommunicado detention to this day", the group added. Meles, however, said Meshal was probably being freed soon. Addis Ababa is a key ally of Washington in the region, and U.S. security services work closely with Ethiopian counterparts. Amnesty said that as well as the 85 sent to Ethiopia, another 27 detainees were either released in Kenya or sent back to their countries, including four to the United States and one to Oman. One was charged in Kenya, while 27 are still missing. Other groups have also lambasted the transfers of the detainees, likening the case to the holding of terror suspects in the U.S. naval base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay. "Ethiopia appears to be copying the unacceptable and unlawful treatment of prisoners practiced by the United States in the global war on terror," two rights groups, Reprieve and Cageprisoners, said in a recent release.
Source: Reuters