BY SHASHANK BENGALI
McClatchy News Service
NAIROBI, Kenya — At least 76 people who were captured while fleeing the war in Somalia in January are still being held in Ethiopia under a program of secret prisoner renditions backed by the United States, Kenya and Somalia, human rights activists said Friday.
The Muslim Human Rights Forum, a Kenyan advocacy group, said the prisoners — including 17 Kenyan citizens and 20 Ethiopians — were being held incommunicado and in violation of international prisoner conventions, and may be at risk of torture.
Most of the Ethiopians in custody are members of the minority Ogadeni and Oromo ethnic groups, which are waging separatist campaigns against Ethiopia. International human rights monitors have warned that Ethiopian security forces routinely abuse members of those groups, and the U.S. State Department has accused Ethiopia of torturing prisoners.
The Muslim group’s report, titled ”Horn of Terror,” provides the fullest accounting so far of the fates of 152 people from 21 countries who were arrested in a shadowy antiterrorism operation run by U.S. allies in the Horn of Africa that activists think had the backing of American officials.
The captives included at least three Americans, whom FBI agents questioned in Nairobi. They included Daniel Joseph Maldonado, who was deported to the United States to face federal terrorism charges, and Amir Mohamed Meshal, who was among about 80 prisoners transferred back to Somalia and later to Ethiopia. Ethiopian authorities released Meshal in May without charging him.
The whereabouts of the third American, whom the Muslim group identified as Abikar Abdullahi Osman, remain unknown, but it’s thought that he was released into U.S. custody in Kenya. His name didn’t appear on flight manifests that showed Meshal and others were transferred to Somalia.
Lawyers and human rights groups have questioned whether the renditions were part of a policy by the Bush administration — whose detention practices are under congressional scrutiny — to have other countries hold terrorism suspects.
U.S. officials have described Kenya and Ethiopia as partners against terrorism in the region, where al Qaeda cells have struck in the past, and the American military has coordinated with its allies at least three strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Somalia in recent months.