KENYA TERROR SUSPECTS TO COME HOME

At least 10 victims from East Africa, of the secret” Extraordinary Rendition” program  in the Horn of Africa remain in Ethiopian jails and the whereabouts of others is unknown, an international human rights group said on Wednesday 10/01/2008.

Activists and Muslim groups have long accused Kenyan authorities of rounding up scores of people for transfer to Somalia and then to Ethiopia in early 2007 after the Ethiopian-Somali War when Ethiopian forces, which entered Somalia in 12/2006, helped oust the Islamists from the capital Mogadishu, also rounded up an unknown number of people in Somalia, HRW said.

Many of them were taken for questioning to Ethiopia, the groups say, and kept in jails that some campaigners called an "African Guantanamo" in comparison with the United States jail in Cuba.

“Dozens of people caught up in the secret Horn of Africa Extraordinary Renditions in 2007”,  claimed Jennifer Daskal, author of the report for USA-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published in 09/2008. The governments of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have all denied illegally transporting and jailing people, saying they have only taken action against legitimate suspects.

HRW said at least 150 men, women and children from more than 18 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, were rounded up near the Somali border in early 2007.

Most detainees were eventually sent home after interrogation, including by US agents, the group said. But 10 remain in Ethiopia and several others are missing.

"The previous Kenyan government deported its own citizens and then left them to rot in Ethiopian jails," Jennifer Daskal said.

* Related topics - KENYA 05.24.08 ; Nairobi-Blast

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04/10/2008 06:40:07