“Why Am I Still Here?”
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“Why Am I Still Here?” The 2007 Horn of Africa Renditions and the Fate of Those Still Missing Copyright © 2008 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 1-56432-380-3 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA Tel: +1 212 290 4700, Fax: +1 212 736 1300 [email protected] Poststraße 4-5 10178 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 2593 06-10, Fax: +49 30 2593 0629 [email protected] Avenue des Gaulois, 7 1040 Brussels, Belgium Tel: + 32 (2) 732 2009, Fax: + 32 (2) 732 0471 [email protected] 64-66 Rue de Lausanne 1202 Geneva, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 738 0481, Fax: +41 22 738 1791 [email protected] 2-12 Pentonville Road, 2nd Floor London N1 9HF, UK Tel: +44 20 7713 1995, Fax: +44 20 7713 1800 [email protected] 27 Rue de Lisbonne 75008 Paris, France Tel: +33 (1)43 59 55 35, Fax: +33 (1) 43 59 55 22 [email protected] 1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 500 Washington, DC 20009 USA Tel: +1 202 612 4321, Fax: +1 202 612 4333 [email protected] Web Site Address: http://www.hrw.org October 2008 1-56432-380-3 “Why Am I Still Here?” The 2007 Horn of Africa Renditions and the Fate of Those Still Missing Map of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.................................................................................. 1 Summary ...........................................................................................................................2 Recommendations..............................................................................................................6 To the Ethiopian Government ......................................................................................... 6 To the Kenyan Government............................................................................................. 6 To the US Government.....................................................................................................7 To the Somali Government...............................................................................................7 To the Canadian Government...........................................................................................7 To Other Governments.....................................................................................................7 Methodology......................................................................................................................8 Arrest, Detention, Rendition, and Torture ...........................................................................9 Conflict in Somalia ......................................................................................................... 9 Arrests and Detentions in Kenya and Somalia................................................................10 Renditions to Somalia and Ethiopia...............................................................................12 US Intelligence in Addis Ababa......................................................................................13 US Aid to the Region...................................................................................................... 15 The Ethiopian Role.........................................................................................................16 The “Disappeared”........................................................................................................17 Case Studies ....................................................................................................................22 Ishmael Noor................................................................................................................ 22 Arrest and Detention in Kenya ................................................................................ 23 Rendition to Somalia and Ethiopia ......................................................................... 24 Interrogations and Torture in Ethiopia..................................................................... 24 Release and Return to Kenya .................................................................................. 26 Salim Awadh Salim........................................................................................................27 Addis Ababa........................................................................................................... 28 Ali Yusuf .......................................................................................................................29 Kamilya Mohamed Tuwein............................................................................................ 32 Suleiman Abdi...............................................................................................................34 Swaleh Ali Tunza .......................................................................................................... 36 Abdullah Hamid ............................................................................................................37 International Legal Standards .......................................................................................... 40 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... 43 Appendix A. Letter to the Ethiopian Government, August 21, 2008.................................... 44 Appendix B. Letter to the Kenyan Government, August 29, 2008....................................... 47 Appendix C. Letter to the Kenyan Government, March 22, 2007 ........................................ 49 Map of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia © 2008 John Emerson 1 Human Rights Watch October 2008 Summary Ishmael Noor, a 37-year-old shepherd from the Ogaden region in Ethiopia, looked up with tears in his eyes. He said that in 2004, Ethiopian forces—who had already killed his mother, father, brothers, and sisters—murdered his wife days after they were married. They then slaughtered his goats, beat him unconscious, and slashed his shoulder to the bone. In December 2006, Noor crossed through Somalia into Kenya, heading for the nearest refugee camp in search of medical care. But when he did not have enough money to pay a 1,000 shilling ($15) bribe, the Kenyan police bundled him into a car and took him to Nairobi. A few weeks later, he was herded onto an airplane with some 30 others, flown to Somalia, and handed over to Ethiopian military officers— the same forces that he had previously fled. Several days after that, Noor was flown to Ethiopia. Noor’s story fits a larger pattern. In early 2007, at least 90 people were rendered from Kenya to Somalia, and then on to Ethiopia. Many were held incommunicado and without charge for months, and some were held for more than a year. A few— including a Canadian and nine who assert Kenyan nationality—remain in detention even now. The whereabouts of others—including several Somalis, Ethiopian Ogadenis, and Eritreans—are unknown. These renditions and detentions followed a US-backed Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia. In late 2006, the Ethiopian military, in support of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, ousted Islamist authorities from the Somali capital Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands of Somalis to flee across the border into Kenya, including some who were suspected of terrorist links. Kenyan authorities arrested at least 150 men, women, and children from more than 18 countries―including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada―in operations carried out near the Somali border. Suspecting the detainees of having links to terrorism, the Kenyans held them for weeks without charge in Nairobi. Over “Why Am I Still Here?” 2 the course of three weeks from January 20 to February 10, 2007, the Kenyan government rendered dozens of these individuals―with no notice to families, lawyers or the detainees themselves―on flights to Somalia, where they were handed over to the Ethiopian military. Ethiopian forces also arrested an unknown number of people in Somalia. Those rendered were then transported to detention centers in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and other parts of Ethiopia, where they effectively disappeared. Denied access to their embassies, their families, and international humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the detainees were even denied phone calls home. Several detainees have said that they were housed in solitary cells—some as small as two-by-two meters—with their hands cuffed in painful positions behind their backs and their feet bound together any time they were in their cells. In Addis Ababa, a number of prisoners were questioned by US intelligence agents. From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees— including several pregnant women—to a villa where US officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist links. At night the Ethiopian officers returned the detainees to their cells. After US officials would end their interrogation of a detainee, the Ethiopian government usually sent them home. Of those known to have been interrogated by the US government, just eight Kenyans remain in Ethiopia. (A ninth Kenyan in Addis Ababa was rendered to Ethiopia in July 2007 after American interrogations reportedly stopped.) These men, who have not been subjected to interrogation since May 2007, would likely have been repatriated long ago but for the Kenyan government’s longstanding refusal to acknowledge their claims to Kenyan citizenship or to take steps to secure their release. In August 2008, Kenyan authorities visited these men for the first time, some