American intelligence agents are interrogating hundreds of al-Qa'eda suspects secretly imprisoned in Ethiopia, human rights organisations said yesterday.
The detainees, from 19 different countries, have allegedly been "illegally" deported to Ethiopia where they are being held in horrific conditions in crowded jails, notorious for torture and abuse.
They include women and children as young as seven months and were arrested in Somalia and Kenya as they fled December's rout of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) around Mogadishu.
"We fear that many of the detainees will face mistreatment and possibly torture or execution in Ethiopian custody," said Peter Takirambudde, the executive director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
"We have previously documented that Ethiopian forces routinely engage in torture of criminal, political and military detainees. All parties to the armed conflict in Somalia must abide by international law."
The New York-based organisation said that the governments of Kenya, Ethiopia and the US had "played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone".
Georgette Gagnon, HRW's deputy Africa director, said "Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to 'disappear' and US security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado."
An estimated 85 of the prisoners were secretly flown from Nairobi to Somalia, where they were handed to Ethiopian state forces who have controlled their Horn of Africa neighbour since invading on Christmas Eve. From there, according to investigations by HRW and others including the Muslim Human Rights Foundation in Nairobi, they were transferred to prisons in Addis Ababa.
Conditions are said to be "horrific", with a dozen detainees sharing a single 10ft by 10ft cell with little food and rare access to exercise areas.
None has been allowed to see their lawyers and none has been charged, despite being held for up to two months, investigators claim.
The US government denies that it ordered three late-night charter flights that carried the prisoners from Nairobi to Baidoa, the former seat of Somalia's interim government.
But the operations, the first of their kind in east Africa, have chilling echoes of the CIA's so-called "extraordinary renditions" of terror suspects to third-party countries for secret interrogations.
Officials in Washington yesterday acknowledged that their agents in the Horn of Africa, including in Addis Ababa, have questioned potential terror agents who may have been in Somalia fighting for the al-Qa'eda-linked Islamic Courts Union.
"While in custody of the foreign government, the FBI was granted limited access to interview certain individuals of interest," Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman, told the Associated Press news agency.
"We do not support or participate in any system that illegally detains foreign fighters or terror suspects, including women and children."
Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, refused to discuss details of the operations, but said: "To fight terror, the CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to."
