Suspects arrested in a clandestine anti-terrorism sweep in East Africa nearly two years ago have been abandoned by their governments, a human rights group said in a report yesterday that detailed torture accusations from former prisoners.
One Canadian and nine Kenyans are still jailed without charge in Ethiopia after being arrested last year and 22 more east Africans of various nationalities are missing, said a report by Human Rights Watch titled Why Am I Still Here?
The men were part of roundup of about 90 people arrested in the months after Ethiopia toppled Somalia’s Islamist government at the end of 2006. They are accused of being members of insurgent and Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda.
The prisoners were detained in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and moved to secret jails where some say they were tortured by Ethiopian guards and often questioned by US interrogators, the report said.
Ethiopia is a key ally in the US’ war on terror, but is frequently criticized for its poor record on human rights.
The US government has acknowledged questioning foreign terror suspects transferred from other countries to Ethiopian jails, but denied there is anything illegal about the practice. US officials said the suspects were never in US custody.
“No one has any interest in [the prisoners] and they seem to be stuck in never-never land,” said the report’s author, Jennifer Daskal, a counterterrorism counsel for the Human Rights Watch.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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