The Observer -- 'Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet,' begins the argument by Jonathon Porritt, government adviser and all-round environmental guru.
'Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.'
According to Porritt, the most senior adviser to the government on sustainability, we have become a generation of shopaholics. We are bombarded by advertising from every medium which persuades us that the more we consume, the better our lives will be. Shopping is equated with fun, fulfilment and self-identity. It is also, Porritt warns, killing the planet. He argues, in an interview with The Observer, that merely switching to 'ethical' shopping is not enough. We must shop less.
From pictures of Coleen McLoughlin weighed down with designer bags to branding endorsements by the likes of David Beckham, the image of consumerism as a universal aspiration is ubiquitous. Last week 3,000 people stormed Primark's new flagship store on London's Oxford Street before the official opening time, putting two staff in hospital and earning the description by BBC2's Newsnight of 'a plague of locusts'. There are, however, a growing number of dissenting voices such as the so-called 'Froogles', individuals who use the internet to seek a simpler lifestyle, and organisations and websites which urge people to kick the retail habit.
Porritt, chairman of the government's Sustainable Development Commission, has concluded that consumerism is central to the threat facing the planet, cannibalising its natural resources and producing the carbon dioxide emissions which result in climate change.
In a film for Channel Five, he points out that Britons throw away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks, with 100 million tonnes of waste pouring into the country's 12,000 landfill sites every year. If all six billion people in the world were to consume at the same level, we would need two new Earths to supply all the energy, soil, water and raw materials required.
'I think capitalism is patently unable to go on growing the size of the consumer economy for any more people in the world today because levels of consumption are already undermining life support systems on which we depend - so if we do it for any more people, the planet will go pop,' Porritt told The Observer. 'So in a way we don't have a choice about this: we've got to rethink the basic premise behind capitalism to make it deliver the goods. In the long run, when you really look at what happens on a planet with nine billion people and really serious constraints on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we can emit, it's almost inevitable we will learn to have more elegant, satisfying lives, consuming less. I can't see any way out of that in the long run.'
Porritt, co-founder of Forum For The Future, Britain's leading sustainable development charity, believes that consumerism has taken over our lives almost unnoticed. 'Shopping has become a recreational activity,' he continued. 'There's a lot of evidence that people really do see shopping now as an amenity pastime. We're well beyond the time where shopping was just a way of transacting what you needed in life. It's now all about identity and status and recreation and companionship, even about meaning in people's lives. There's always been a "keeping up with the Joneses" type thing, but it's now almost universalised and there is a sense of buying to be more like something or to get the image of somebody, particularly with clothes or branded goods, where there's very much that sense of, "If I buy something with this name on it, maybe a little bit of the magic of that name will rub off on me and I'll be a better person", whereas we all know you're exactly the same person just waiting to go out and make your next branded purchase.'
Porritt's film cites China as an example of how booming economic growth has produced an explosion of consumerism with mixed results: millions have risen out of poverty, but the consequences for the environment are severe. He added: 'There's always been a more privileged part of society which was into buying more than they needed in order to demonstrate how wealthy and influential they were, but the benefits of mass consumption have now been spread so wide that we've got anywhere between 1.5 and two billion people on the planet today who can use their purchasing power like that. The total spend on advertising is just so enormous now that it's little wonder people are seduced into this idea that their personal happiness results from spending in the way they're being encouraged to do.'
There are some pockets of resistance. 'Froogles' include New Yorker Judith Levine who, realising that she had spent $1,000 (£500) in the run-up to Christmas in 2004, decided to buy nothing but necessities for the next year, chronicling the experience in her book, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
A group called The Compact, made up of 10 friends in San Francisco, gained members around the world: their mission, to take a '12-month flight from the consumer grid' and boycott all non-essential products. Every year, in November, Buy Nothing Day encourages people to 'shop less - live more', and last year there were multiple events in Manchester and Oxford and at least six other British cities. Meanwhile, websites such as Freecycle.org enable users to exchange unwanted goods and preventing them going to waste.
February saw the launch of Buy (Less), whose website parodies RED, the global fundraising campaign led by U2 singer Bono which tells consumers that when they buy RED branded products -which include clothes, a credit card and mobile phone - a slice of the money will be used to fight Aids in Africa. Buy (Less) Crap challenges the concept, urging its visitors to 'join us in rejecting the ti(red) notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering'. It provides weblinks to several charities so that people can make direct donations instead.
'I've always been very nervous about this implied assumption that the more you put on your credit card, the more your charities will benefit, which is a bit perverse, but is what happens when you're using credit cards of that kind,' Porritt said. 'I think it clutters up the awareness we need to encourage in people now that there's an awful lot of unnecessary consumption, conspicuous consumption, irresponsible consumption, and we're just got to get used to cracking down on that in our own lives and really thinking through the implications of all that.'
Red officials argue that their campaign is not about buying more but about buying differently. They say that is about buying an 'ethical' version of a product rather than a 'non-ethical' one. But Porritt argues that there is not only a need to shop differently, but to shop less. 'I don't subscribe to this view that all we need to do is consume a little more thoughtfully, a little bit less damagingly. When I look at the amount of consumption that almost instantly turns into waste, with huge amounts bought for no particularly good purpose and then discarded or thrown away, I do find it inexcusable. When some people are buying food they're not buying for a particular meal, they're not thinking it through very carefully, they're almost buying speculatively as if, "Well, we might eat that this week, if we don't we'll chuck it away." I find that extraordinary. I'm not being a miserable, parsimonious, old tightwad, it's just why would you buy stuff that's not needed?'
He denies that he is advocating a return to the austerity and rationing last seen during and just after the Second World War, although he describes low air fares as 'ludicrous' and warns a sacrifice will have to be made to reduce carbon emissions. 'I know for sure that if we ever had a golden age, as far as most people are concerned, it's been over the last 50 years. That's the period of the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of people, so I don't have any nostalgia for past eras where life was simpler but more primitive. I don't talk about going back to anything, I talk about using technology a great deal more intelligently and efficiently to continue to give us a very high quality of life with a fraction of the environmental cost.
'We need "sustainability literacy", enabling people to see what the costs of living in a certain way really look like. We're blind to a lot of that. When people take holidays in far-flung places they very rarely think about the impact of hundreds of thousands of tourists descending on some destination somewhere in the world. We've just got to get wiser to what happens when we enjoy the perks of this life.'
His sentiments were echoed by the conservation group Friends of the Earth. Tony Juniper, its director, said: 'Our consumer culture is completely out of the step with the capacity of the planet. If we're going to have a world that is in a fit state to live in by the end of the century, we're going to have to drastically reduce the amount of material demand.
'We need a legal framework for economic activity, but in the end this is about culture, and culture shapes politics. At the moment the culture is being shaped in an unsustainable direction by the advertising industry. It's perfectly possible to present an alternative, but no one has the budget: Friends of the Earth has a few thousand pounds, whereas millions are spent to promote a single car.'
Trevor Datson, a spokesman for Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, insisted it shares many of Porritt's values. 'There's no question there's too much waste in society, and we'd agree with Jonathon there. The thrust of Tesco's moves on the environment is helping customers choose a greener lifestyle. Our carrier bag scheme is designed to incentivise rather than castigate: we've saved 350 million plastic bags since last July by offering club card points for people who re-use bags. It's the power of making people feel good about green choices rather than having to live like a monk.'
Mountains of waste
· 3.3 million tonnes of food are binned every year in the UK
· People get a new mobile on average every 18 months
· Last Christmas, more than 6 million PCs were left on standby in empty offices
· 1.5 million computers are thrown away every year, of which 99 per cent work perfectly
Buying into a low-cost lifestyle
'Froogles' started life as a broad American movement of environmentally motivated types who wanted to reduce drastically their consumerism. They use the internet to exchange goods for free.
Buy (Less) is an organisation that encourages individuals to donate money to charities and inspire less consumption.
www.buylesscrap.org
Justin Rowlatt, a reporter on BBC TV's Newsnight, became Ethical Man when he led a green lifestyle for a year. He installed energy-efficient lightbulbs, avoided animal product foods and gave up his car to switch to public transport.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6413195.stm
Buy Nothing Day started in 1993 and became an international event celebrated in 55 countries. Its aim is to make consumers think about how buying goods impacts on the environment and poverty.
www.buynothingday.co.uk
In December 2005 a group of professional friends in San Francisco got together and called themselves The Compact, aiming to go 'beyond recycling' by reducing clutter and waste.
www.sfcompact.blogspot.com
A New York City couple, Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin, are spending a year experimenting with a new lifestyle they call No Impact. They only eat organic food produced within 400km of Manhattan, producing no rubbish, and using no paper (including toilet paper) or carbon-emitting transport.
www.noimpactman.typepad.com/blog
Luc Torres
· Big Ideas that Changed the World: Tuesday 10 April, 7.15pm, Channel Five
Monday, April 16, 2007
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Western Media Accused of 'Hidden Agenda'
Black Britain -- The western media, particularly BBC and CNN, have been accused of vilifying President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and presenting him as a ‘terrorist’ for “reasons of paving way for the implementation of US and Britain’s agenda for the country.”
Patrick Mlalumi and Nelly Chikava, two Zimbabweans who were in Ghana for a week's visit told Black Britain in Accra that “The human rights situation in Zimbabwe is being twisted to paint a picture of Zimbabwe that is at variance with the true situation on ground. I stay in Harare and I can tell you that the international media seem to be pursuing a hidden agenda judging by the way they report situations there," said Mlalumi.
“I am not comfortable with many actions that Mugabe has taken in the past few years and the whole nation today feels the impact of those actions but I am put off by the campaign of calumny that BBC, CNN and other western media have been championing in recent times,” he added.
The 35-year old economist accused the west of a grand design to unseat President Mugabe because of the takeover of farm lands from white farmers in the country.
“What Britain must acknowledge is that they created the problem in the first place. Whites in colonial Rhodesia simply dispossessed locals of their land without paying any form of compensation at all. I know that there has been huge international outcry about that but I think it is because the white farmers are the ones that have the means and contacts to attract the attention of the western media,” stated Chikava who works with a consultancy firm in Harare.
“Yesterday BBC told us that Morgan Tsvangirai was seriously sick and could rarely talk. Yet he was granting interviews same day and from the way he talked you could see that he is not as sick as he was been portrayed. It is obvious he is being sponsored from by the west,” she further stated.
BBC accused of biased reporting
“We will like to see Mugabe go. We want change but we wouldn’t want a puppet of Britain and America for president,” said Mlalumi.
Yaw Mensah, a Ghanaian who spoke to Black Britain also decried the coverage of the Zimbabwean situation by the western media describing it as part of a “conspiracy to perpetuate colonial strongholds in Africa.” I have been listening to BBC this part few days and I must say I am appalled by its bias,” Kojo Asare,” another Ghanaian told Black Britain.
But Kwesi Tetteh, a high school teacher in Accra believes there is need for an international coalition that would compel Mugabe to stop human rights abuse: “If what we hear from daily news report is right then I think the AU should mediate immediately and force President Mugabe to yield to the voice of reason.”
Morgan Tsvangirai, the main opposition leader was moved into the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Harare Wednesday after reportedly suffering a suspected fractured skull, brain injury and internal bleeding.
"There are lots of people who've been subjected to this kind of torture, this kind of brutality by this regime," Tsvangirai said in an interview with local media from his hospital bed. Presidents John Kufuor of Ghana, chairman of African Union, and Thabo Mbeki of neighbouring South Africa, have come under intense international criticism for failing to take action to quell the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.
Kufuor in an interview Wednesday described the political situation in Zimbabwe as embarrassing to the continent. What was happening in that country, he said was making the AU uncomfortable. The Ghanaian president who concluded a three-day official visit to the UK Thursday, said the body was 'very concerned' about the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe was one of the African leaders that attended Ghana’s golden jubilee where he took time out to pay visit to the family of Sally Mugabe, his first wife, a Ghanaian, who died in 1992. Mugabe met her in the 1950s while working as a teacher in Ghana.
Patrick Mlalumi and Nelly Chikava, two Zimbabweans who were in Ghana for a week's visit told Black Britain in Accra that “The human rights situation in Zimbabwe is being twisted to paint a picture of Zimbabwe that is at variance with the true situation on ground. I stay in Harare and I can tell you that the international media seem to be pursuing a hidden agenda judging by the way they report situations there," said Mlalumi.
“I am not comfortable with many actions that Mugabe has taken in the past few years and the whole nation today feels the impact of those actions but I am put off by the campaign of calumny that BBC, CNN and other western media have been championing in recent times,” he added.
The 35-year old economist accused the west of a grand design to unseat President Mugabe because of the takeover of farm lands from white farmers in the country.
“What Britain must acknowledge is that they created the problem in the first place. Whites in colonial Rhodesia simply dispossessed locals of their land without paying any form of compensation at all. I know that there has been huge international outcry about that but I think it is because the white farmers are the ones that have the means and contacts to attract the attention of the western media,” stated Chikava who works with a consultancy firm in Harare.
“Yesterday BBC told us that Morgan Tsvangirai was seriously sick and could rarely talk. Yet he was granting interviews same day and from the way he talked you could see that he is not as sick as he was been portrayed. It is obvious he is being sponsored from by the west,” she further stated.
BBC accused of biased reporting
“We will like to see Mugabe go. We want change but we wouldn’t want a puppet of Britain and America for president,” said Mlalumi.
Yaw Mensah, a Ghanaian who spoke to Black Britain also decried the coverage of the Zimbabwean situation by the western media describing it as part of a “conspiracy to perpetuate colonial strongholds in Africa.” I have been listening to BBC this part few days and I must say I am appalled by its bias,” Kojo Asare,” another Ghanaian told Black Britain.
But Kwesi Tetteh, a high school teacher in Accra believes there is need for an international coalition that would compel Mugabe to stop human rights abuse: “If what we hear from daily news report is right then I think the AU should mediate immediately and force President Mugabe to yield to the voice of reason.”
Morgan Tsvangirai, the main opposition leader was moved into the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Harare Wednesday after reportedly suffering a suspected fractured skull, brain injury and internal bleeding.
"There are lots of people who've been subjected to this kind of torture, this kind of brutality by this regime," Tsvangirai said in an interview with local media from his hospital bed. Presidents John Kufuor of Ghana, chairman of African Union, and Thabo Mbeki of neighbouring South Africa, have come under intense international criticism for failing to take action to quell the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.
Kufuor in an interview Wednesday described the political situation in Zimbabwe as embarrassing to the continent. What was happening in that country, he said was making the AU uncomfortable. The Ghanaian president who concluded a three-day official visit to the UK Thursday, said the body was 'very concerned' about the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe was one of the African leaders that attended Ghana’s golden jubilee where he took time out to pay visit to the family of Sally Mugabe, his first wife, a Ghanaian, who died in 1992. Mugabe met her in the 1950s while working as a teacher in Ghana.
Opposition CUDP Decries Mockery of Justice in Ethiopia
Kinijit Press Release -- The kangaroo court of the increasingly emboldened tyrant Meles Zenawi has dealt yet another flagrant and severe blow to the cause of justice, liberty, and indeed to all national and international covenants on fundamental human rights.
Yesterday, April 4, 2007, the "court" ruled that the prosecutor has presented "enough evidence" in support of the treason charge against all the top leaders and executive council members of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP), one of the very first but foremost political party in the history of Ethiopia with a scrupulous record for pursuing political change solely on the basis of an unflinchingly peaceful, scrupulously legal and doggedly democratic means. Subsequently, the "defendants" have been ordered to face trial that could well end in the death penalty if they are convicted.
This "ruling" flies in the face of the all round and consistently repeated condemnation of the charges as politically motivated and as a brazen attempt to criminalize dissent by all international human rights organizations known to man and the declaration by all that the charged are quintessentially prisoners of conscience.
It is in the public record the world over that the ludicrously sham trial started well after the repeated and open declarations to the world media by the increasingly tyrannical PM Meles Zenawi that all the defendants are absolutely guilty and should face "trial" and the death penalty.
The very first action of the tyrant was to remove the parliamentary immunity (by a "vote in parliament" that was stacked by the incumbent party after the bitterly contested and abortive elections and after the boycott of the parliament by many in the opposition) of all CUDP leaders who had been overwhelmingly elected in the abortive 2005 national elections in constituencies that were monitored by international observers and therefore were relatively sheltered from the flagrant vote rigging by Meles and his extensive party and government machinery. The second action was to summarily round up and incarcerate all the top leaders of CUDP as well as every single one of the most publicly known human rights defenders, civil society advocates and independent journalists in the country. The CUDP leaders, for daring to call for national reconciliation and earnest negotiations on the most basic and utterly minimum tenets of the rule of law; the human rights defenders, civil society advocates and independent journalists for daring to refuse to toe the party line on the flagrantly stolen elections and the subsequent daylight mass murders of hundreds of unarmed civilian protestors (a fact that was indisputably established by the inquiry commission appointed by the tyrant Zenawi himself).
The third action of the tyrant was to intimidate or otherwise incarcerate any and all independent lawyers that dared to declare that they will defend the CUDP leaders and civil society members in court along with tens of thousands of civilians who were in any way shape or form associated with the CUDP or were known or suspected to have been supporters of the CUDP. Having terrorized the population, murdered hundreds of unarmed civilian protestors and incarcerated virtually all public opposition members who have not cowed into joining the rubber stamp parliament and also having arrested masses of CUDP supporters, the tyrant proceeded to charging the CUDP leaders and the other key prisoners of conscience with "treason, genocide and outrage against the constitution"
These charges were obviously and flagrantly ludicrous and the confidence of the "defendants" and the general public in the iron-clad, party controlled and derelict courts was utterly non-existent (based on their inability to deliver justice in a single political trial over the 15 yrs despotic rule of Meles Zenawi). The prisoners proceeded to overwhelmingly defy the court by refusing to respond to the charges and "defend" themselves during the long drawn out proceedings.
These proceedings were also so comprehensively littered with illegal representations, fabrications, statements taken under torture, open innuendo and alleged actions that had no relationship with the actions of the "defendants", that international observers, journalists and jurists long declared them to be utterly inept and devoid of any semblance of legality and due process. This is in the public record.
From the early days of the election campaigns, the duration of the abortive elections, the failed compliant investigation and adjudication process and the subsequent aborted negotiations with the incumbent, every single one of the CUDP leaders have consistently demonstrated that they are unflinching messengers of peace, reconciliation and democracy in all their campaigns, public declarations and political activities. For anyone who bothered to witness the "trials" so far and examined the "evidence", there is not a single shred of evidence linking them to any illegal activity of any kind under the existing laws of the country.
All Ethiopians and members of the international community who are not encumbered by political expediency know that what is at trial here and what is on the verge of being sentenced to death or long incarceration is peace, liberty and democracy in Ethiopia.
This is not the view of a vengeful opposition movement. This is the voice of all Ethiopians outside of the ruling clique who have voiced their opinions while being shot by the murderous junta, incarcerated in it’s prison camps, having their basic rights trampled upon by a tyrant increasingly emboldened by the temporary power of maximum local terror induced by massacres, the lack of meaningful pressure by the only constituency that the tyrant depends on but a constituency that has so far been reluctant to seize the opportunity to stand on the side of justice - the international community led by the US administration and the European commission. Few have any doubt that the charges against the CUDP leaders are nothing but pure and simple criminalization of dissent. In fact, although political hyperbole is not our choice for discourse, it will be remiss of us to not state that charging the CUDP leaders with treason is tantamount to Hitler charging the Jews with the holocaust. We again emphatically state that we have no confidence whatsoever that the current court system can deliver justice. We can not, and will not expect justice from a court system completely strangled by a totalitarian political establishment. The Ethiopian people have seen and lived the tyrannical system and its flagrant mockery of justice for 16 long years. We dare anyone who speaks of ‘just and speedy trials’ to look into the 16 years record of the justice system in our country and find a single occasion in which the PM and his henchmen and their handpicked judges delivered justice in a political trial.
The CUDP still stands firm and is certain of the support of the Ethiopian people on it’s three main agendas as the only avenues for political reconciliation and moving the democratization process forward: 1) The unconditional release of the unjustly imprisoned CUD leaders and associated civil society members 2) The ceasing of the nationwide harassment, intimidations, detention and murders of CUD members and supporters 3) Earnest trilateral negotiations on the eight cardinal confidence building measures the CUD submitted to the negotiating table in October 2005 and the subsequent call for a national reconciliation conference by the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy.
We also recognize that Ethiopia currently is and must continue to be a pivotal ally to the international effort to combat terrorism in all its forms. In this connection, we ardently remind the international community that it’s deafening silence in the face of such injustice will only serve to sow serious doubts amongst the impacted populace about the sincerity of any past or future engagements by the international community in the country’s political evolution. Such silence in the face of gross injustice will also surely be a free gift to the forces of evil who can only flourish amongst a disenfranchised and desperate population.
We say again, we stand behind the correct and just fight against terrorism in all its forms. We also say that the major players in the international community should not allow tyrants to hide behind clever speeches and deceptive maneuvers in the name of being allies in anti terrorism, while continuing to deny liberty and democracy to their people. The people are the true allies of the US in this fight and the US must stand on their side. We believe that in the free society that we will continue to strive for; the international community will find a true ally that has no axe to grind nor employs opportunistic political maneuvering, but a committed partner in the local and international effort for peace, liberty and democracy.
The CUDP leaders and their followers have no enemies in this struggle; just the Ethiopian people and a regime that has for long been and still is on the wrong path. They set out to correct that path peacefully and with the consent of the people. Where they depart is, the incumbent insists on imposing his vision, whilst the CUDP’s struggle is to create a level playing field where everyone’s voice is heard and the collective vision that comes out of that is one shared by all. That is what the Ethiopian people hoped for in May 2005. That is what our leaders are in jail for. That is what our compatriots have paid the ultimate sacrifice for. That is what we will continue to struggle towards, for as long as it takes.
We again call on the US state department, the European Commission and all members of the international community to condemn today’s "ruling" by the tyrannical "court" and to unequivocally call for the unconditional release of the CUDP leaders and their fellow political prisoners. The unconditional release of the prisoners of conscience is the only sure way to begin earnest national reconciliation and for Ethiopia to proceed to develop peace, sustainable development and democracy. It is also the only way that Ethiopia can take her rightful place in the international community as a land where human rights are respected and the rule of law reigns.
THE LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN TO PRESIDENT BUSH TO CONTINUES UNTIL PASSAGE OF H.R. 5680.
Submit your letter now.
Yesterday, April 4, 2007, the "court" ruled that the prosecutor has presented "enough evidence" in support of the treason charge against all the top leaders and executive council members of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP), one of the very first but foremost political party in the history of Ethiopia with a scrupulous record for pursuing political change solely on the basis of an unflinchingly peaceful, scrupulously legal and doggedly democratic means. Subsequently, the "defendants" have been ordered to face trial that could well end in the death penalty if they are convicted.
This "ruling" flies in the face of the all round and consistently repeated condemnation of the charges as politically motivated and as a brazen attempt to criminalize dissent by all international human rights organizations known to man and the declaration by all that the charged are quintessentially prisoners of conscience.
It is in the public record the world over that the ludicrously sham trial started well after the repeated and open declarations to the world media by the increasingly tyrannical PM Meles Zenawi that all the defendants are absolutely guilty and should face "trial" and the death penalty.
The very first action of the tyrant was to remove the parliamentary immunity (by a "vote in parliament" that was stacked by the incumbent party after the bitterly contested and abortive elections and after the boycott of the parliament by many in the opposition) of all CUDP leaders who had been overwhelmingly elected in the abortive 2005 national elections in constituencies that were monitored by international observers and therefore were relatively sheltered from the flagrant vote rigging by Meles and his extensive party and government machinery. The second action was to summarily round up and incarcerate all the top leaders of CUDP as well as every single one of the most publicly known human rights defenders, civil society advocates and independent journalists in the country. The CUDP leaders, for daring to call for national reconciliation and earnest negotiations on the most basic and utterly minimum tenets of the rule of law; the human rights defenders, civil society advocates and independent journalists for daring to refuse to toe the party line on the flagrantly stolen elections and the subsequent daylight mass murders of hundreds of unarmed civilian protestors (a fact that was indisputably established by the inquiry commission appointed by the tyrant Zenawi himself).
The third action of the tyrant was to intimidate or otherwise incarcerate any and all independent lawyers that dared to declare that they will defend the CUDP leaders and civil society members in court along with tens of thousands of civilians who were in any way shape or form associated with the CUDP or were known or suspected to have been supporters of the CUDP. Having terrorized the population, murdered hundreds of unarmed civilian protestors and incarcerated virtually all public opposition members who have not cowed into joining the rubber stamp parliament and also having arrested masses of CUDP supporters, the tyrant proceeded to charging the CUDP leaders and the other key prisoners of conscience with "treason, genocide and outrage against the constitution"
These charges were obviously and flagrantly ludicrous and the confidence of the "defendants" and the general public in the iron-clad, party controlled and derelict courts was utterly non-existent (based on their inability to deliver justice in a single political trial over the 15 yrs despotic rule of Meles Zenawi). The prisoners proceeded to overwhelmingly defy the court by refusing to respond to the charges and "defend" themselves during the long drawn out proceedings.
These proceedings were also so comprehensively littered with illegal representations, fabrications, statements taken under torture, open innuendo and alleged actions that had no relationship with the actions of the "defendants", that international observers, journalists and jurists long declared them to be utterly inept and devoid of any semblance of legality and due process. This is in the public record.
From the early days of the election campaigns, the duration of the abortive elections, the failed compliant investigation and adjudication process and the subsequent aborted negotiations with the incumbent, every single one of the CUDP leaders have consistently demonstrated that they are unflinching messengers of peace, reconciliation and democracy in all their campaigns, public declarations and political activities. For anyone who bothered to witness the "trials" so far and examined the "evidence", there is not a single shred of evidence linking them to any illegal activity of any kind under the existing laws of the country.
All Ethiopians and members of the international community who are not encumbered by political expediency know that what is at trial here and what is on the verge of being sentenced to death or long incarceration is peace, liberty and democracy in Ethiopia.
This is not the view of a vengeful opposition movement. This is the voice of all Ethiopians outside of the ruling clique who have voiced their opinions while being shot by the murderous junta, incarcerated in it’s prison camps, having their basic rights trampled upon by a tyrant increasingly emboldened by the temporary power of maximum local terror induced by massacres, the lack of meaningful pressure by the only constituency that the tyrant depends on but a constituency that has so far been reluctant to seize the opportunity to stand on the side of justice - the international community led by the US administration and the European commission. Few have any doubt that the charges against the CUDP leaders are nothing but pure and simple criminalization of dissent. In fact, although political hyperbole is not our choice for discourse, it will be remiss of us to not state that charging the CUDP leaders with treason is tantamount to Hitler charging the Jews with the holocaust. We again emphatically state that we have no confidence whatsoever that the current court system can deliver justice. We can not, and will not expect justice from a court system completely strangled by a totalitarian political establishment. The Ethiopian people have seen and lived the tyrannical system and its flagrant mockery of justice for 16 long years. We dare anyone who speaks of ‘just and speedy trials’ to look into the 16 years record of the justice system in our country and find a single occasion in which the PM and his henchmen and their handpicked judges delivered justice in a political trial.
The CUDP still stands firm and is certain of the support of the Ethiopian people on it’s three main agendas as the only avenues for political reconciliation and moving the democratization process forward: 1) The unconditional release of the unjustly imprisoned CUD leaders and associated civil society members 2) The ceasing of the nationwide harassment, intimidations, detention and murders of CUD members and supporters 3) Earnest trilateral negotiations on the eight cardinal confidence building measures the CUD submitted to the negotiating table in October 2005 and the subsequent call for a national reconciliation conference by the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy.
We also recognize that Ethiopia currently is and must continue to be a pivotal ally to the international effort to combat terrorism in all its forms. In this connection, we ardently remind the international community that it’s deafening silence in the face of such injustice will only serve to sow serious doubts amongst the impacted populace about the sincerity of any past or future engagements by the international community in the country’s political evolution. Such silence in the face of gross injustice will also surely be a free gift to the forces of evil who can only flourish amongst a disenfranchised and desperate population.
We say again, we stand behind the correct and just fight against terrorism in all its forms. We also say that the major players in the international community should not allow tyrants to hide behind clever speeches and deceptive maneuvers in the name of being allies in anti terrorism, while continuing to deny liberty and democracy to their people. The people are the true allies of the US in this fight and the US must stand on their side. We believe that in the free society that we will continue to strive for; the international community will find a true ally that has no axe to grind nor employs opportunistic political maneuvering, but a committed partner in the local and international effort for peace, liberty and democracy.
The CUDP leaders and their followers have no enemies in this struggle; just the Ethiopian people and a regime that has for long been and still is on the wrong path. They set out to correct that path peacefully and with the consent of the people. Where they depart is, the incumbent insists on imposing his vision, whilst the CUDP’s struggle is to create a level playing field where everyone’s voice is heard and the collective vision that comes out of that is one shared by all. That is what the Ethiopian people hoped for in May 2005. That is what our leaders are in jail for. That is what our compatriots have paid the ultimate sacrifice for. That is what we will continue to struggle towards, for as long as it takes.
We again call on the US state department, the European Commission and all members of the international community to condemn today’s "ruling" by the tyrannical "court" and to unequivocally call for the unconditional release of the CUDP leaders and their fellow political prisoners. The unconditional release of the prisoners of conscience is the only sure way to begin earnest national reconciliation and for Ethiopia to proceed to develop peace, sustainable development and democracy. It is also the only way that Ethiopia can take her rightful place in the international community as a land where human rights are respected and the rule of law reigns.
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Report: Hundreds Held Illegally in Ethiopia
Star News Online -- 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 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.
The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP.
Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland.
Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with 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 sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa.
U.S. access
U.S. government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. 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 U.S. agents were allowed limited access by governments in the Horn of Africa to question prisoners as part of the FBI's counter-terrorism work.
Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida.
But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation.
John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, went further. He said in an e-mail that the United States has acted as "ringleader" in what he labeled a "decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo."
Details of the arrests, transfers and interrogations slowly emerged as AP and human rights groups investigated disappearances, diplomats tracked missing citizens and the first detainees to be released told their stories.
One investigator from an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media, said Ethiopia had secret jails at three locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; an Ethiopian air base 37 miles east of the capital; and the far eastern desert close to the Somali border.
More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials.
Those people were then deported in clandestine predawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children.
In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says.
A further 200 people, also captured in Somalia, were mainly Ethiopian rebels who backed the Somali Islamist movement, according to one rights group and a Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job. Those prisoners also were taken to Ethiopia, human rights groups say.
Kenya continues to arrest hundreds of people for illegally crossing over from Somalia. But it is not clear if deportations continue.
The Pentagon announced last week that one Kenyan al-Qaida suspect who fled Somalia, Mohamed Abul Malik, was arrested and flown to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials.
"No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia," said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further.
A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story.
"It was a nightmare from start to finish," Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2 1/2 months in detention without charge.
She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country.
She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane.
Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said.
In a telephone conversation with AP, Tuweni said the man identified himself as a U.S. official, but not from the FBI. A CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the agency had no contact with Tuweni.
"We cried the whole time because we did not know what would happen. The whole thing was very scary," said Tuweni, who flew back to her family in Dubai a day after her release.
Tuweni's version of her transfer out of Kenya is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. It shows she was taken to Mogadishu, Somalia, with 31 other people on an unscheduled flight chartered by the Kenyan government.
A detainee's tale
The family of a Swedish detainee, 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, said she was freed from Ethiopia on March 27 and arrived home the following day. Benaouda had traveled to Somalia with her fiance but fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said.
"She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she's lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds)," her mother, Helena Benaouda, a 47-year-old Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council, wrote on a Web site she set up to help secure her daughter's release. "She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet."
The mother spoke briefly by telephone with AP, saying any information she had was being posted on the Web site. She declined to make her daughter available for an interview.
According to the Web site, an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints of detainees. It said the teenager was never charged or allowed access to lawyers. The teen was also concerned about a 7-month-old baby that was in detention with her, the Web site said.
The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia.
U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal's transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department.
He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status.
An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was "disgusted" by Meshal's deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal.
"My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi (jerk), but the precedent of 'deporting' U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one," the official quoted the memo as saying.
One U.S. detainee
Like Benaouda, Meshal was arrested fleeing Somalia. A Kenyan police report of Meshal's arrest obtained by AP says he was carrying an assault rifle and had crossed into Kenya with armed Arab men who were trying to avoid capture.
Meshal's parents insist he is innocent and called on the U.S. government to win his release.
"My son's only crime is that he's a Muslim, an American Muslim," his father, Mohamed Meshal, said from the family's two-story home on a cul-de-sac in Tinton Falls, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Fifi.
"Clearly the U.S. government interrogated him, and threatened him with torture according to the accounts that we've seen," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law who has been assisting the family.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday to demand Meshal's immediate release. "Our government cannot allow an American citizen to continue to be held by the Ethiopian government in violation of international law and our own due process," he said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of the Geneva Conventions that protect victims of war, is seeking access to the Ethiopian detainees, said a diplomat from a country whose citizens are being held. He insisted on speaking anonymously because he is working for their release.
'Boldly and lawfully'
U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss the detentions only if not quoted by name because of the information's sensitivity, said Ethiopia had allowed access to U.S. agencies, including the CIA and FBI, but the agencies played no role in arrests, transport or deportation.
One official said it would have been irresponsible to pass up an opportunity to learn more about terrorist operations.
Kolko, the FBI spokesman, also said the detainees were never in FBI or U.S. government custody.
"While in custody of the foreign government, the FBI was granted limited access to interview certain individuals of interest," he told AP. "We do not support or participate in any system that illegally detains foreign fighters or terror suspects, including women and children."
Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to discuss details of any such interviews. He said, however: "To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to."
One of the U.S. officials said the FBI has had access in Ethiopia to several dozen individuals - fewer than 100 - as part of its investigations.
The official said the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds are a major focus of the agents' work. Law enforcement officials have long believed the bombings were carried out by members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network who were later given safe haven in Somalia.
The official said FBI agents would not be witness or party to any questioning that involved abuse.
It wasn't clear how many people the CIA interviewed or whether the agency's officers were working jointly with the FBI.
Laws violated?
The CIA began an aggressive program in 2002 to interrogate suspected terrorists at an unknown number of secret locations from Southeast Asia to Europe. Prisoners were frequently picked up in one country and transferred to a prison in another, where they were held incommunicado by a cooperative intelligence service. But President Bush announced in September that all the detainees had been moved to military custody at Guantanamo Bay.
One Western diplomat, who refused to be quoted by name for fear of hurting relations with the countries involved, would not rule out that additional suspects in Ethiopia could be sent to Guantanamo.
Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua insisted no laws were broken and said his government was not aware that anyone would be transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia.
Lawyers and human rights groups argue the covert transfers to Ethiopia violated 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. "Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and U.S. security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado."
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Katherine Shrader in Washington, Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Sweden, and Rebecca Santana in Tinton Falls, N.J., contributed to this report.
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.
The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP.
Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland.
Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with 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 sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa.
U.S. access
U.S. government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. 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 U.S. agents were allowed limited access by governments in the Horn of Africa to question prisoners as part of the FBI's counter-terrorism work.
Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida.
But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation.
John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, went further. He said in an e-mail that the United States has acted as "ringleader" in what he labeled a "decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo."
Details of the arrests, transfers and interrogations slowly emerged as AP and human rights groups investigated disappearances, diplomats tracked missing citizens and the first detainees to be released told their stories.
One investigator from an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media, said Ethiopia had secret jails at three locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; an Ethiopian air base 37 miles east of the capital; and the far eastern desert close to the Somali border.
More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials.
Those people were then deported in clandestine predawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children.
In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says.
A further 200 people, also captured in Somalia, were mainly Ethiopian rebels who backed the Somali Islamist movement, according to one rights group and a Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job. Those prisoners also were taken to Ethiopia, human rights groups say.
Kenya continues to arrest hundreds of people for illegally crossing over from Somalia. But it is not clear if deportations continue.
The Pentagon announced last week that one Kenyan al-Qaida suspect who fled Somalia, Mohamed Abul Malik, was arrested and flown to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials.
"No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia," said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further.
A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story.
"It was a nightmare from start to finish," Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2 1/2 months in detention without charge.
She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country.
She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane.
Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said.
In a telephone conversation with AP, Tuweni said the man identified himself as a U.S. official, but not from the FBI. A CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the agency had no contact with Tuweni.
"We cried the whole time because we did not know what would happen. The whole thing was very scary," said Tuweni, who flew back to her family in Dubai a day after her release.
Tuweni's version of her transfer out of Kenya is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. It shows she was taken to Mogadishu, Somalia, with 31 other people on an unscheduled flight chartered by the Kenyan government.
A detainee's tale
The family of a Swedish detainee, 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, said she was freed from Ethiopia on March 27 and arrived home the following day. Benaouda had traveled to Somalia with her fiance but fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said.
"She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she's lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds)," her mother, Helena Benaouda, a 47-year-old Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council, wrote on a Web site she set up to help secure her daughter's release. "She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet."
The mother spoke briefly by telephone with AP, saying any information she had was being posted on the Web site. She declined to make her daughter available for an interview.
According to the Web site, an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints of detainees. It said the teenager was never charged or allowed access to lawyers. The teen was also concerned about a 7-month-old baby that was in detention with her, the Web site said.
The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia.
U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal's transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department.
He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status.
An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was "disgusted" by Meshal's deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal.
"My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi (jerk), but the precedent of 'deporting' U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one," the official quoted the memo as saying.
One U.S. detainee
Like Benaouda, Meshal was arrested fleeing Somalia. A Kenyan police report of Meshal's arrest obtained by AP says he was carrying an assault rifle and had crossed into Kenya with armed Arab men who were trying to avoid capture.
Meshal's parents insist he is innocent and called on the U.S. government to win his release.
"My son's only crime is that he's a Muslim, an American Muslim," his father, Mohamed Meshal, said from the family's two-story home on a cul-de-sac in Tinton Falls, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Fifi.
"Clearly the U.S. government interrogated him, and threatened him with torture according to the accounts that we've seen," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law who has been assisting the family.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday to demand Meshal's immediate release. "Our government cannot allow an American citizen to continue to be held by the Ethiopian government in violation of international law and our own due process," he said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of the Geneva Conventions that protect victims of war, is seeking access to the Ethiopian detainees, said a diplomat from a country whose citizens are being held. He insisted on speaking anonymously because he is working for their release.
'Boldly and lawfully'
U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss the detentions only if not quoted by name because of the information's sensitivity, said Ethiopia had allowed access to U.S. agencies, including the CIA and FBI, but the agencies played no role in arrests, transport or deportation.
One official said it would have been irresponsible to pass up an opportunity to learn more about terrorist operations.
Kolko, the FBI spokesman, also said the detainees were never in FBI or U.S. government custody.
"While in custody of the foreign government, the FBI was granted limited access to interview certain individuals of interest," he told AP. "We do not support or participate in any system that illegally detains foreign fighters or terror suspects, including women and children."
Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to discuss details of any such interviews. He said, however: "To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to."
One of the U.S. officials said the FBI has had access in Ethiopia to several dozen individuals - fewer than 100 - as part of its investigations.
The official said the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds are a major focus of the agents' work. Law enforcement officials have long believed the bombings were carried out by members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network who were later given safe haven in Somalia.
The official said FBI agents would not be witness or party to any questioning that involved abuse.
It wasn't clear how many people the CIA interviewed or whether the agency's officers were working jointly with the FBI.
Laws violated?
The CIA began an aggressive program in 2002 to interrogate suspected terrorists at an unknown number of secret locations from Southeast Asia to Europe. Prisoners were frequently picked up in one country and transferred to a prison in another, where they were held incommunicado by a cooperative intelligence service. But President Bush announced in September that all the detainees had been moved to military custody at Guantanamo Bay.
One Western diplomat, who refused to be quoted by name for fear of hurting relations with the countries involved, would not rule out that additional suspects in Ethiopia could be sent to Guantanamo.
Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua insisted no laws were broken and said his government was not aware that anyone would be transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia.
Lawyers and human rights groups argue the covert transfers to Ethiopia violated 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. "Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and U.S. security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado."
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Katherine Shrader in Washington, Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Sweden, and Rebecca Santana in Tinton Falls, N.J., contributed to this report.
EU Given War Crime Warning Over Somalia Aid
A girl watches as her family prepares to leave Mogadishu. Photograph: Mustafa Abdi/AFP/Getty
The Guardian -- European lawyers are examining whether alleged war crimes committed by Ethiopian and Somali troops in Mogadishu last week could expose the EU to accusations of complicity because of its formidable financial assistance to the two countries.
A massive Ethiopian-led offensive to pacify an insurgency in the Somali capital left nearly 400 people dead between March 29 and April 1. Human rights groups say many of the victims were civilians and accuse the Ethiopians of using tanks and attack helicopters to fire indiscriminately into densely populated areas. Some analysts in Somalia have backed the war crimes allegations, saying that specific clans in Mogadishu have been targeted for "cleansing" by pro-government forces.
Reports of the attacks prompted the European commission's senior adviser on security for Somalia to send a letter, seen by the Guardian, to Eric van der Linden, the commission's head of delegation in Kenya, on April 2, alerting him to the "significance of the events of the past four days in Mogadishu in terms of the international law on conflict".
The security adviser, who has wide experience in African conflict zones, including Darfur, said the head of the African Union peacekeeping mission, Amisom and comprising 1,200 Ugandans, might also be guilty of war crimes for failing to act responsibly. Ethiopian helicopters used the Amisom-controlled airport in Mogadishu as a base for launching helicopter attacks and flying in reinforcements.
"I need to advise you that there are strong grounds to believe that the Ethiopian government and the transitional federal government of Somalia and the Amisom force commander...have through commission or omission violated the Rome statute of the international criminal court [ICC]," he wrote. He accused Ethiopian and Somali troops of breaking international law by intentionally attacking civilians in Mogadishu and by ordering their displacement.
Ethiopia ousted the Somali Council of Islamic Courts from power in late December but has been unable to pacify Mogadishu, which is controlled by the powerful Hawiye clan. Though the insurgents are former Islamist fighters and clan and warlord militias, the Ethiopians and the Somali government have singled out two subclans as bearing the greatest responsibility. Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf, a former warlord despised in the capital, said recently that civilians in areas where insurgents operated would be "bombarded".
Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda vehemently reject the war crimes allegations. Mr van der Linden said it was up the ICC to look at war crimes. "Is there any suspicion that this is what occurred? To my mind, no. But the person who wrote the letter is a security specialist, so I have sent it to our headquarters for legal experts to look at."
Lawyers will look at the security adviser's warning about the European commission's potential culpability as the largest donor to both Somalia and Ethiopia and as a big financial backer of the peacekeeping mission. "In regards the above-mentioned violations of international law, there arise urgent questions of responsibility and potential complicity in the commission of war crimes by the European commission and its partners, specifically with regard to the current and ongoing financial and technical assistance being provided by the EC to any of the parties who may have committed war crimes," the letter read.
One Somali expert, who requested anonymity, said the chaotic state of the country meant war crimes charges were unlikely to reach the ICC.
Strong support from the US for Ethiopia's incursion is another potential obstacle to investigation. But the expert and another regional analyst said it was time the international community spoke out against abuses. "When the Sudan government bombs villages in Darfur, it's called genocide," the second analyst said. "But when the Ethiopians bomb civilian areas...nothing is said. Is it because this is perceived to be part of the war on terror?"
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