Posted on Fri, Mar. 16, 2007
EXCLUSIVE
By Jonathan S. Landay and Shashank Bengali
McClatchy Newspapers
NAIROBI, Kenya _ A U.S. citizen who was caught fleeing the recent fighting in Somalia was questioned about links to al Qaida by the FBI in Kenya, then secretly sent back to the war-ravaged country, where he was turned over to Ethiopian forces.
Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia, where the State Department's 2006 human rights report says "conditions in prisons and pre-trial detention centers remain very poor" and "there were numerous credible reports that security officials often beat or mistreated detainees."
The fact that Meshal has landed in an Ethiopian prison without any semblance of due process raises new questions about what role the rule of law plays in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Other suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" have been exposed to extreme interrogation methods, secretly sent to countries that practice torture, held for extended periods without charges or lawyers, or put under surveillance without court warrants.
An American official who met Meshal in Kenya but wasn't authorized to discuss his case publicly told McClatchy Newspapers that the U.S. Embassy asked Kenya to release Meshal so he could return to the United States. There are no outstanding charges against Meshal, and U.S. law enforcement officials weren't planning to take him into custody, the official said.
“The Kenyan authorities decided otherwise. It’s not something we have control over,” the official said. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. has protested Meshal's deportation.
Human rights groups in Kenya and the United States, however, disputed the contention that the U.S. was powerless to win Meshal’s release from Kenyan custody before he was deported.
“Anyone who tells you that the United States doesn’t have the clout to convince the Kenyans to return an American citizen is either misinformed or lying,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, in New York.
Kenya and Ethiopia are key allies in the Bush administration's battle against Islamic extremism in Africa, and President Bush has requested a total of more than $1 billion in aid for the two countries in fiscal 2008, making them among the largest recipients of U.S. aid in Africa.
A spokesman for the Kenyan government didn't have any immediate comment.
Meshal's treatment contrasts sharply with that of four British citizens who were caught fleeing the fighting, and of Daniel Joseph Maldonado, another U.S. citizen who fled Somalia and was arrested for entering Kenya illegally.
The four Britons were turned over to British officials, sent home and freed after they were questioned. U.S. authorities obtained custody of Maldonado and his two children from Kenya, flew them back to the United States and charged him in Texas with undergoing military and bomb-making training with al Qaida in Somalia.
The difference, said two other U.S. officials who are familiar with the case but also weren't authorized to discuss it publicly, is that Maldonado quickly confessed to his involvement with al Qaida and Meshal didn't. So while Maldonado could be brought home and imprisoned until his trial, one of the officials said, there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge Meshal and keep him in jail in the United States.
Meshal's saga appears to have begun began late last year, when Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to help crush the Islamic Courts Council, an alliance of militias that the Bush administration alleges is an al Qaida front. The administration backed the Ethiopian operation with training, intelligence, special forces, and aerial surveillance, and worked closely with Kenya, Ethiopia and the interim Somali government to capture suspected al Qaida members and other potential terrorists.
Meshal and Maldonado were among some 40 foreigners who fled the southern Somali city of Kismayo around Jan. 3, according to an account that one of the foreigners, a British national named Mohammed Ezzouek, gave to human rights groups in London.
They traveled by boat to the village of Ras Kamboni near the Kenyan border, but fled when it appeared that the village would come under attack, Ezzouek said. They walked for several days through forests and swamps, but when a battle erupted nearby, the group scattered and lost track of Meshal.
Meshal resurfaced around Jan. 24, when Kenyan authorities arrested him in the border village of Kiunga. He was taken to the capital, Nairobi, where he was booked on an immigration violation, according to U.S. officials in Kenya.
While Meshal was jailed in Kenya, he told other detainees and Muslim human rights activists who visited the group that FBI agents had threatened to send him back to Somalia if he didn’t admit he was an al Qaida member. Meshal said he was an American citizen from New Jersey, that he’d recently been in Dubai, and that he'd gone to Somalia to practice Islam under the Courts regime, which had imposed Islamic law on much of the country.
Meshal told the human rights activists that FBI agents drove him to a hotel in a U.S. Embassy car for an interview on Feb. 5. He said the agents told him to confess to being a member of al Qaida or they'd send him to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, according to Omar Mohammed of the Nairobi-based Muslim Human Rights Forum, who spoke regularly with Meshal in prison.
“He was informed that he was in a lawless country and had no right to legal representation,” Mohammed said. “He was being treated as a terrorist.”
Mohammed said that Meshal had told him that the FBI agents had showed him photos of several people and told him they'd been taken at terrorist training camps in Somalia. Meshal said that when he denied knowing the people, the agents threatened him with torture and said they’d come back the next day, according to Mohammed.
When they returned, however, the agents were friendly and didn’t repeat the torture threat, Meshal told Mohammed. That was the last Meshal reported being visited by the FBI.
Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington, confirmed that FBI agents interviewed Meshal in Nairobi. But he said they never threatened him and said the bureau had informed his parents in Tinton Falls, N.J., of his whereabouts.
Other U.S. officials said that Meshal's allegations of threats and torture mirror the guidance in an Islamic extremist training manual that surfaced in England, and they said the agents who questioned him suspected that he'd received training in how to resist interrogation and what to tell human rights activists.
Meshal's father, Mohamed Meshal, declined to discuss the matter.
On Feb. 10, Kenyan authorities chartered an aircraft from Bluebird Aviation Co. to transport Meshal and at least 12 other prisoners to Baidoa, the headquarters of the interim Somali government.
Ezzouek and three other British citizens _ Reza Afsharzadagen, Hamza Chentouf and Shahajan Janjua _ also were on the Feb. 10 flight to Baidoa. Ezzouek told rights activists in London that when the plane landed in Baidoa, all the prisoners were led into an underground cell at a Somali military base.
“It was pitch black,” Ezzouek said. “There were water bottles down there to pee into. The floor was dusty and dirty. There were rats and cockroaches.”
After two or three days, Meshal and most of the other prisoners were taken out of the cell, leaving only the four British citizens, Ezzouek said. The next day, British diplomats arrived on a large military aircraft and transported the four prisoners via Nairobi to London, where they were questioned and later released.
Two U.S. officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Meshal was turned over to Ethiopian forces in Somalia and is being held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. FBI agents began visiting him regularly last week, one of the officials said.
"We have only recently learned that Mr. Meshal is now in detention in Addis Ababa and will be seeking consular access to him," said State Department spokesman Casey.
The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington didn't respond to a request for comment.
(Bengali reported from Nairobi, Landay from Washington.)
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