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| Last Updated: Nov 3, 2008 - 11:09:50 PM |
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Ethiopia: More Blowback from the War on Terror
2 Oct 2, 2008 - 5:17:04 PM
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The U.S.-backed Ethiopian military has secreted
away scores of "suspects" – including pregnant women and children – and
fueled anti-American rancor in Africa.
By Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel
Ishmael,
a 37-year-old shepherd from the Ogaden region in Ethiopia, looked at me
with tears in his eyes. Ethiopian forces – who had already killed his
mother, father, brothers and sisters – murdered his wife days after
they were married. They then slaughtered his goats, beat him
unconscious, and slashed his shoulder to the bone, he said.
In December 2006, Ishmael crossed through Somalia into Kenya, heading
for the nearest refugee camp in search of medical care. But when he
didn't have enough money to pay a 1,000 shilling ($15) bribe, the
Kenyan police bundled him into a car and took him to Nairobi. Less than
a month later, he was herded onto an airplane with some 30 others,
flown to Somalia and handed over to the Ethiopian military – the same
forces that he previously fled.
Ishmael is a victim of a 2007 rendition program in the
Horn of Africa, involving Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and the United
States. There are at least 90 more victims like him. Most have since
been sent home. A few – including a Canadian and nine who assert Kenyan
nationality – remain in detention even now. The whereabouts of 22
others – including several Somalis, Ethiopian Ogadenis, and Eritreans –
remain unknown.
In late 2006, the Bush administration backed a full-scale
Ethiopian military offensive that ousted the Islamist authorities from
Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands of Somalis,
including some who were suspected of terrorist links, to flee across
the Kenya border.
Kenyan authorities arrested at least 150 men, women and
children from more than 18 countries – including the United States, the
United Kingdom and Canada – in operations near the Somali border, and
held them for weeks without charge in Nairobi. In January and February
2007, the Kenyan government then unlawfully put dozens of these
individuals – with no notice to families, lawyers or the detainees
themselves – on flights to Somalia, where they were handed over to the
Ethiopian military. Ethiopian forces also arrested an unknown number of
people in Somalia.
Those rendered were later transported to detention centers
in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and other parts of Ethiopia, where
they effectively disappeared. Denied access to their embassies, their
families and international humanitarian organizations such as the
International Committee of the Red Cross, the detainees were even
denied phone calls home. Several detainees have said that they were
housed in solitary cells, some as small as two meters by two meters,
with their hands cuffed in painful positions behind their backs and
their feet bound together any time they were in their cells.
An unknown number of them – likely dozens – were
questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of
Investigation agents in Addis Ababa. From February to May 2007,
Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees – including
several pregnant women – to a villa where US officials interrogated
them about suspected terrorist links. At night the Ethiopian officers
returned the detainees to their cells.
For the most part, detainees were sent home soon after
their interrogation by US agents ended. Of those known to have been
interrogated by US officials, just eight Kenyans remain. (A ninth
Kenyan in Addis Ababa was rendered to Ethiopia in August 2007, after US
interrogations reportedly stopped.) These men, who have not been
subjected to any interrogation since May 2007, would likely have been
repatriated long ago but for the Kenyan government’s longstanding
refusal to acknowledge their claims to Kenyan citizenship or to take
steps to secure their release.
Recently I spoke by telephone to several of the
still-detained Kenyans. They described water-soaked mattresses,
insufficient food and inadequate healthcare. Two said they have trouble
walking, following beatings by Ethiopian officials, and a third said he
can no longer use his left hand.
“I can’t sleep here. I miss my family. Please, I need you to help us to go home,” one detainee pleaded with me.
In
mid-August 2008, Kenyan authorities visited these men for the first
time. The officials reportedly told the detainees they would be home
within a few weeks. But more than a month and a half has passed with no
apparent follow-up.
In addition to working with the US, the Ethiopians used
the rendition program for their own ends. For years, the Ethiopian
military has been trying to quell domestic Ogadeni and Oromo
insurgencies that receive support from neighboring countries, such as
Ethiopia's archrival, Eritrea. The multinational rendition program
provided them a convenient means to continue this internal battle – and
get their hands, with US and Kenyan support, on those with suspected
insurgent links.
Ishmael was one of their victims.
The
questions his Ethiopian interrogators asked were nonstop, and always
the same: "Are you al-Qaida? Are you an Ogadeni rebel? Are you part of
the Somali insurgency?" Each time he said no, he was beaten, sometimes
to the point of unconsciousness. When he resisted answering, they
targeted his testicles.
Then, in February 2008 – some 14 months after his original
arrest – the Ethiopians decided Ishmael was no longer worth the
trouble. They dumped him, along with 27 others, just over the Somali
border. The men were met by a Somali officer who told him that he was
very sorry, that their arrest was a mistake and that they were all
innocent.
Now Ishmael is back in the refugee camp, limping and
urinating blood. He is still waiting for the healthcare he came
searching for nearly two years ago.
Almost everyone I spoke with assumed – whether true or not
– that the United States backed the arbitrary arrest and unlawful
rendition of men like Ishmael and the still-detained Kenyans. Almost
everyone assumed that the Ethiopians operate with America's blessing.
Their stories have circulated, fueling anger and resentment. As one
man, whose childhood friend became one of the rendition victims, told
me, "Now when I go to the mosque, I pray to God to punish the
Americans."
To be sure, the United States is not the main culprit when
the Kenyans unlawfully render suspects or the Ethiopians torture them.
But when US officials interrogate rendition victims who are being held
incommunicado, the United States becomes complicit in the abuse. The
U.S. is funding the Ethiopian military, supporting its activities in
Somalia and training Kenyan security forces in counterterrorism – so as
US-backed military and police forces in the region brutalize their
domestic opponents in the name of fighting terrorism, the United States
is often blamed.
The United States could change those perceptions by
demanding higher standards of its foreign partners and cutting off aid
to abusers. It otherwise risks fueling the very problem – anti-American
militancy – that it seeks to solve. For starters, the US could demand
the release or fair trial of any rendition victims still stuck in
Ethiopian custody.
At the end of our interview, Ishmael looked at me with sad
eyes. "I have suffered three times," he told me. "I lost my family; I
was beaten and tortured, and then I was arrested and tortured again.
Now I have nothing to lose."
Source:HRW
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