ANTHONY MITCHELL NAIROBI CIA and FBI agents hunting for al Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, it was claimed yesterday.

ANTHONY MITCHELL
NAIROBI

CIA and FBI agents hunting for al Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, it was claimed yesterday.

The detainees in the country, which is notorious for torture and abuse, include at least one US citizen and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests.

Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.

Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops who drove a radical Islamist government out of Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled.

US government officials acknowledged the questioning but they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism.

The prisoners were never in American custody, said an FBI spokesman, Richard Kolko, who denied the agency would support or be party to illegal arrests. He said US agents were allowed limited access by governments to question prisoners.

However, John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, said the US has acted as "ringleader" in what he called a "decentralised, outsourced Guantanamo".

Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by US officials. A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story.

"It was a nightmare," Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, said after her release on March 24. She said she had been held for two and a half months without charge.

Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia. Tuweni's version of her transfer is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a US agent, she said.

The family of a Swedish detainee, Safia Benaouda, 17, said she was freed a week ago. Benaouda had fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said.

"She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she's lost about 22 pounds," said her mother, Helena Benaouda, a Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council. "She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet."

Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said his government was not aware anyone would be transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia.

Lawyers and human rights groups argue the transfersviolated international law. "Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch.-AP