Investigating 'Africa's Guantanamo'

Salim Awadh is talking to me from inside a cell somewhere in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

There are seven other prisoners kept in the same small, dark room, he starts to tell me.

Kenya's government has long seen Somalia as a haven for terrorists

Then he suddenly stops speaking. I can hear frantic whispering in the background. Then he says it is safe to carry on.

"The conditions are really bad: we don't have enough food, we don't have enough access to medicine. The cell is wet," he says.

"We sleep on the floor rather than the sodden mattresses. One of the other prisoners was beaten so badly he's had his leg broken."

Salim is able to speak to me because he has bribed a guard and got access to a mobile phone.

For weeks I have been trying to find out information about him and other detainees in what has been called "Africa's Guantanamo". It is a story the governments involved do not want to talk about: The first mass rendition of terrorist suspects in Africa.

In January 2007, Ethiopian troops had taken control of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), an Islamist movement which had controlled much of southern Somalia for the previous six months.

They tried to force me to admit that my husband was a terrorist. They said I had to tell them the truth or they would strangle me Fatma Chande

Members of the UIC, militia fighters and civilians were all fleeing towards Kenya. Among them were Salim Awadh, a Kenyan, and his Tanzanian wife, Fatma Chande. Both of them were arrested as they crossed the border.

"I was kept in a cell with other women. Then the Kenyan anti-terrorist police questioned me - they asked me why we went to Somalia," Fatma says.full report