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.
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