Suspects arrested in a clandestine anti-terrorism sweep in East Africa nearly two years ago have been abandoned by their governments, a human rights group said in a report yesterday that detailed torture accusations from former prisoners.
One Canadian and nine Kenyans are still jailed without charge in Ethiopia after being arrested last year and 22 more east Africans of various nationalities are missing, said a report by Human Rights Watch titled Why Am I Still Here?
The men were part of roundup of about 90 people arrested in the months after Ethiopia toppled Somalia’s Islamist government at the end of 2006. They are accused of being members of insurgent and Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda.
The prisoners were detained in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and moved to secret jails where some say they were tortured by Ethiopian guards and often questioned by US interrogators, the report said.
Ethiopia is a key ally in the US’ war on terror, but is frequently criticized for its poor record on human rights.
The US government has acknowledged questioning foreign terror suspects transferred from other countries to Ethiopian jails, but denied there is anything illegal about the practice. US officials said the suspects were never in US custody.
“No one has any interest in [the prisoners] and they seem to be stuck in never-never land,” said the report’s author, Jennifer Daskal, a counterterrorism counsel for the Human Rights Watch.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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