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Kenya deported over 100 people to Somalia, Ethiopia – rights grp

March 23, 2007 (MOMBASA, Kenya) — The Kenyan government deported more than 100 people from 20 countries to lawless Somalia after they crossed illegally into Kenya during fighting earlier this year, and the deportees were subsequently arrested by Ethiopian troops, a human rights group said Friday.

The Kenyan government denied the men and women refugee status and even sent its own citizens back to face an uncertain future in a country with no functioning legal system, the chairman of Muslim Human Rights Forum, Al-Amin Kimathi, said.

Ethiopian forces, who are in Somalia to protect the fragile government there, then flew the suspects to two detention centers in Ethiopia, he added.

A U.S. citizen was among those sent to Ethiopia, where human rights groups say torture is regularly practiced. U.S. authorities had earlier confirmed a U.S. citizen had been deported from Kenya and ended up in Ethiopia, and expressed concern over the case. Somalis, Kenyans, Tunisians, Yemenis and Saudis made up the majority of the suspects, Kimathi said.

“We are very concerned about the welfare of these people,” he told The Associated Press. Kenyan and Ethiopian officials have so far declined to comment on the deportations.

Kimathi said his group based its information on flight manifests, which he provided to the AP, and Somali government officials. The African Express Airways manifests were dated Jan. 20 and Jan. 27 of this year.

The documents’ authenticity couldn’t be independently confirmed, but an airline official said the Kenyan government had chartered flights to Mogadishu on both dates.

“They chartered the airplane from us, but we don’t know whether it was carrying deportees or what,” said the unnamed official.

Kimathi also provided a document signed by Gideon S. Konchella, Kenya’s minister of state for immigration, ordering a deportation to Somalia. Konchella didn’t immediately return a call for comment. Calls to Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua rang unanswered Friday.

It is legal under Kenyan law to deport Somalis back to their own country, even though it has long been wracked by anarchy and violence.

Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia in December to protect the internationally backed government, which was under attack by Islamic militants. Hundreds of people fled to neighboring Kenya and were arrested.

While four Britons were sent home and ultimately released, the U.S. citizen was sent back to Somalia and later transferred to Ethiopia. Amir Mohamed Meshal is in an Ethiopian jail pending a hearing to determine his status, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

Omar Mohamed, another Muslim Human Rights Forum official, said he had spoken to Meshal in February, when he was still in Kenya, and that Meshal reported that his interrogators told him he had no right to legal representation.

U.S. authorities, speaking in Washington, said before he was deported by Kenya, they had already determined that Meshal wasn’t a threat, had violated no U.S. law and didn’t fight for the Somali Islamists, some of whom are accused of having links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. U.S. authorities have objected to the circumstances behind his presence in Ethiopia, a steadfast U.S. counter-terrorism ally.

The U.S. State Department says Meshal, a resident of Tinton Falls, New Jersey, was held for nearly a month in an Addis Ababa jail before U.S. diplomats were finally able to see him Wednesday.

Tom Casey, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said a formal complaint had been made to the government of Kenya over the deportation.

Earlier, however, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya and Somalia, Michael Ranneberger, defended the Kenyan deportations as a whole.

“The Kenyans have carried out security operations based on their own security interests but also based on the request of the (Somali) government to interdict and apprehend terrorists. This has meant specifically the apprehension of a number of terrorists and extremists who have tried to cross the Kenyan border,” he said at a news conference Wednesday. “We would strongly praise the degree of Kenyan cooperation on security issues, as well as this is very important on the overall political process in Somalia.”

Kimathi said he had received unconfirmed information that three of the deportees had died while in Ethiopian custody and expressed deep concern about a Tunisian woman who is reportedly eight months pregnant.

“Our position as human rights defenders is that all the individuals arrested, whether guilty or not, should have been arraigned in court and subjected to the legal process in Kenya,” he said.

(AP)

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