U.S. Questioning Terror Suspects In Secret Ethiopian Prisons

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Baltimore Sun
April 4, 2007
By Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya--CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.
Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats say that hundreds of prisoners, including 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 or their families.
The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen, and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by the AP.
Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops who drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the violence in their homeland.
Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, has a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to gain influence among Muslims in the Horn of Africa.
U.S. government officials contacted by the AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said U.S. agents were following the law and were justified in their actions because they were investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism.
The prisoners were never in U.S. custody, said an FBI spokesman, Richard Kolko, who denied that the agency would support or be party to illegal arrests.
Some U.S. allies have expressed concern about the transfers to the prisons. A Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to the AP only if he was not quoted, to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation.
 
So now the US is blamed for the actions of another country and we are implicated in wrong doing because we question prisoners in someone else's custody!?!

If we step in then we are not minding our own business.
 
So now the US is blamed for the actions of another country and we are implicated in wrong doing because we question prisoners in someone else's custody!?!

If we step in then we are not minding our own business.

Ditto. It's another of those EWYGYS situations. Whatever.
 
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