A Pentagon official overseeing the Guantanamo war crimes court dismissed all pending charges against five prisoners on Tuesday, including a British resident accused in a radioactive “dirty bomb” plot.
The Defense Department gave no reason for the action and said the charges had been dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled later.
But it came after the U.S. government declined to pursue the dirty bomb charges in a Washington court case challenging the detention of Ethiopian-born British resident Binyam Mohammed as an “enemy combatant.”
Mohammed had said repeatedly that he falsely confessed to the plot while he was tortured in a Moroccan prison.
The Pentagon appointee overseeing the Guantanamo tribunals, Susan Crawford, dropped all charges against Mohammed, Saudi Arabian captives Jabran al Qahtani and Ghassan al Sharbi, Algerian prisoner Sufyian Barhoumi, and Sudanese captive Noor Uthman Muhammed, the Defense Department said in a statement.
Qahtani, Sharbi and Barhoumi were accused of plotting to build remote-control detonators for car bombs to be used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Muhammed was alleged to have been an al Qaeda training camp instructor.
GENEVA – Yemen may move to deny entry to people from Ethiopia and Eritrea, after having recently detained 87 Ethiopians who reached the country after a perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden, the United Nations (UN) said today.
“Our office in Yemen is seeking clarification from the government following recent statements by the Interior Ministry that Eritreans and Ethiopians will be denied entry to the country,” said Ron Redmond, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The refugee agency said that over the last two weeks, 87 Ethiopians including 10 women and two children had sought asylum but were detained.
“UNHCR has not had access to them, but we have received government assurances of access,” said Redmond.
In addition, the agency “understands that some 25 Ethiopians, including six women, were removed by authorities from a vehicle transporting new arrivals to the UNHCR reception centre of Ahwar.”
Yemen’s actions came amid a rise in the number of people smuggled across the Gulf of Aden. Most are Somalis, but Ethiopians and Eritreans make up a minority.
For the year up to October 17, some 37 333 people have arrived in Yemen, while 616 have been killed or reported missing.
In October alone, 3 737 people arrived while 95 are missing or feared dead.
NAIROBI // Nestled somewhere among the green hillsides of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, is a cluster of small detention centres, where detainees have languished for almost two years without being charged.
The detention centres are part of an illegal rendition programme that has spanned three Horn of Africa countries and included US interrogators. Human rights organizations have called the jails “Africa’s Guantanamo”, after the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected terrorists have been held since 2002.
The Ethiopian Woyanne rendition programme is not the first time the United States has been accused of sending suspected terrorists to countries that allow torture. A Council of Europe investigation in 2006 found that the CIA detained at least 100 terrorism suspects in Europe and transferred them to such third-party states as Egypt, Morocco and Uzbekistan. These so-called extraordinary renditions are part of the US “war on terror” since the September 11 attacks.
Most of the 150 men, women and children – meaning they were younger than 18 – who were arrested in 2007 as part of the rendition programme have been released.
This month, eight Kenyans arrested in 2007 and transferred to Ethiopian authorities TPLF henchmen were sent back to Kenya. Two others remain in Ethiopian TPLF custody, but at least 22 are unaccounted for, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a rights organisation based in New York. HRW has seen evidence that they were sent to Ethiopia, but the Ethiopians Woyanne cannot account for them.
“The dozens of people caught up in the secret Horn of Africa renditions in 2007 have suffered in silence too long,” said Jennifer Daskal, the senior counterterrorism counsel at HRW. “Those governments involved – Ethiopia TPLF, Kenya and the US – need to reverse course, renounce unlawful renditions, and account for the missing.”
The Horn of Africa rendition programme has its roots in Somalia’s civil war. Somalia, which has been in a perpetual state of conflict since 1991, experienced a brief period of security when a group of hardline Islamists, known as the Islamic Courts Union, took over much of the country in 2006.
Fearing that the courts union would harbor terrorists and turn Somalia into a safe haven for al Qa’eda, the United States in late 2006 backed the EthiopianWoyanne army in an invasion of Somalia to rout the movement. A weak secular transitional government took the place of the Islamic Courts Union, and the Islamists have waged a bloody insurgency ever since.
Thousands tried to flee Somalia into Kenya in Jan 2007. The Kenyan government, at the request of the United States, closed its border with Somalia and arrested suspected insurgents as they tried to cross.
The suspects were taken to Nairobi and then flown to Somalia, according to passenger manifests of the flights. There they were handed over to Ethiopian authorities TPLF and lumped together with other suspects arrested by the Ethiopians Woyanne in Somalia.
From Somalia, the suspects were transferred to Ethiopia, where they were tortured, according to a HRW report on the rendition programme made public on Oct 1.
“They beat me from head to toe,” said Ishmael Noor, a detainee who was released.
“They beat me on my upper arms, on my legs, on the back of my head, on the bottom of my feet. At one point they broke my foot. Sometimes it is still so painful that I cannot sleep.”
Mr Noor, 37, is a shepherd from Ethiopia’s troubled Ogaden region now living in a refugee camp in northern Kenya. He fled to Somalia in 2004 during fighting in Ogaden, according to the HRW report. In 2007, he again fled fighting in Somalia and attempted to cross into Kenya.
He was stopped at the border by Kenyan security forces and was asked to show identification, which he did not have. When he could not pay a bribe of US$15 (Dh55), he was arrested and sent to Nairobi, where he was interrogated before being rendered to the Ethiopians TPLF thugs.
Many of the detainees, who spent months in the detention centres in Addis Ababa, were interrogated by US counterterrorism officials before finally being let go.
The United States also funds Ethiopian security forces TPLF henchmen giving the country $12 million in security-related assistance in 2007.
“The United States says that they were investigating past and current threats of terrorism,” Ms Daskal said. “But the repeated interrogation of rendition victims who were being held incommunicado makes Washington complicit in the abuse.”
Ethiopia was seen as an ideal location for the US officials to interrogate suspects, according to Al Amin Kimathi, the head of the Muslim Human Rights Forum in Kenya.
The United States did not transport or torture the suspects, but instead relied on their its African counterparts to do the dirty work puppets.
“It was the most natural place to take anyone looking for a site to go and torture and to extract confessions,” Mr Kimathi said. “Ethiopia Woyanne allows torture of detainees. And that is the modus operandi in renditions.”
The Ethiopian Zenawi government denied the charges of torture.
“All allegations of torture are untrue,” said Birhan Hailu, Ethiopia’s information minister TPLF minister of misinformation.
“It’s part of a smear campaign against a country which has never committed, and never will, such practices. They were treated very well.”
The US government refuses to comment on the Horn of Africa rendition programme.
“I have no knowledge of it nor as official policy can I comment on such matters,” Jendayi Frazer, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, told the BBC in September.
Eight of the Kenyans held in Ethiopia were released on Oct 4, just days after the HRW report on the rendition programme. They were taken to the port city of Mombasa, where they received medical treatment. The released detainees threatened to sue the Kenyan government over its role in the renditions.
“We urge you to direct the police to immediately investigate the identity of the public officials who authorised the arbitrary kidnapping of our clients, with a view to arresting and prosecuting the officials for abuse of office,” the lawyers for the detainees said in a letter.
Alfred Mutua, a spokesman for the Kenyan government, denied that Kenyan authorities played a role in transferring their own citizens to the Ethiopians TPLF.
The Federal High Court, 8th Criminal Bench adjourned the case of Tewodros Kassahun a.k.a ‘Teddy Afro’ until Monday November 3, 2008 for a final verdict.
After his lawyer Million Assefa completed presenting witnesses and documents in evidence to explain Teddy’s innocence of the charge of hit and run, on October 16, 2008 the Court also heard other witnesses and documentary evidence.
On the day’s session 4 witnesses appeared with two giving testimony including 14th witness Dr. Lasperto Moya, from Minilik II Hospital, who appeared again after the objection of the prosecutor over the translator’s accuracy on last week session. The witness is Cuban. The Court ruled to bring another translator for Thursday trial. Lasperto was present with another translator from the Cuban Embassy. The 14th witness was presented as the prosecution’s witness. Of the three other witnesses only Constable Kebede Weyese gave testimony, also presented as the prosecutor’s witness. The other two witnesses did not give testimonials.
Teddy was jailed six and half months ago after being charged with a hit and run.
He was first detained briefly in November 2006, when the incident occurred and released on 50,000 birr bail, before being apprehended by the police again and taken to Kaliti prison facility, 25kms east of Addis Ababa.
After spending eight years behind bars in Ethiopian jails for presumed links with the terrorist Al Qaeda network, eight Kenyans speak out about their terrible ordeal.
After being secretly detained in Ethiopia for more than one year, eight Kenyans were allowed to return home. These men were arrested in January of last year soon after the collapse of the Islamic courts in Somalia.
Accused of being members of Al Qaeda, they were detained without being officially charged of any crime, and were not allowed to contact a lawyer before being sent to Ethiopia. Thirty three year old Kassim Moussa, returns to his village of Bongwe, 30 km south of Mombasa. He lost everything and can only now help his parents to cultivate their land.
Today Kassim Moussa’s father explains to the village how he had no news about his son or his whereabouts for over a year. The meeting is organised by the Muslim forum for human rights who accuses the Kenyan government of deporting illegally its own citizens. All these ex-detainees are telling the same story. They recount how they remained handcuffed and blindfolded for months.
Bashir Hussein shows wounds he says he incurred while being detained by Ethiopian soldiers TPLF Thugs and also while he was interrogated by CIA agents. These accusations have been denied by the Ethiopian government Woyanne. Some ex-detainees had to be admitted to hospital upon their arrival here. The Muslim forum for human rights have gathered their testimonies in order to sue the Kenyan government but Kenyan authorities still consider that their innocence has not yet been proven.
A convey of Ethiopian military troops Woyanne henchmen which has left the Somali capital Mogadishu, and heading towards Afgoi district which is some 30KM from the Somali capital Mogadishu came under a remote control landmine explosion just some 18KM before reaching the actual destination on Sunday morning.
The explosion was an earsplitting one, and its sound was heard almost in the entire neighborhood.
“The Ethiopian troops TPLF thugs were traveling in 14 military trucks and immediately after the explosion they have alighted from the trucks and opened heavy fire in all the directions, they have also cordoned off the road for a brief time and later reopened it, I have seen them from very far collecting the bodies of 3 of their soldiers but what I can verify is that 1 of their military trucks was burnt to ashes” said Hassan Kassim a resident in the area.
It is the same, same place where Ethiopian military soldiers TPLF mercilessly butchered more than 80 innocent Somali civilians traveling along the road which links Mogadishu and Afgoi district.
Since the arrival of the Ethiopian troops TPLF in Somali particularly in the capital Mogadishu backing the Somali transitional government they have encountered uncountable attacks and roadside bombs.
Somali has not had effective central government for nearly two decades since late Mohamed Siyad Bare was overthrown from power in 1991.
