New Jersey Man Who Fled Somalia Ends Up in an Ethiopian Jail

By RAYMOND BONNER
LONDON, March 22

A 24-year old American who told the F.B.I. that he went to Somalia last December to help build an Islamic state there is now being held in an Ethiopian prison, where he was sent after being detained in Kenya.

The American, Amir Mohamed Meshal, from Tinton Falls, N.J., who had fled to Kenya after fighting broke out in Somalia, was interviewed in Kenya several times by F.B.I. agents, who concluded that he had no terrorist connections, American officials said.

Nevertheless, in February the Kenyan government deported Mr. Meshal to Somalia, which was then essentially controlled by Ethiopian troops, and he was quickly sent to Ethiopia, where he was seen for the first time by an American consular official on Wednesday, the State Department said.

In a report to be released Friday, two human rights organizations, relying on flight logs and interviews, say that Mr. Meshal was one of 63 people whom Kenya deported to Somalia without any judicial proceedings, and that all but four were then sent to Ethiopia.

Those sent to Ethiopia included nine women and five children, and were from more than a dozen countries, including Canada, Sweden, Syria, Saudi Arabia and France, according to the organizations, Reprieve and Cageprisoners, which says it serves the needs of the prisoners held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay.

The American government says it had no role in the deportation of Mr. Meshal from Kenya, and had protested to the Kenyans.

Mr. Meshal was “deported from Kenya without prior notification to the embassy, despite requests that any Americans be deported to the United States,” a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said in response to questions.

A Kenyan spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said in a telephone interview from Nairobi that the deportations were legitimate because the detainees had been “engaged in a guerrilla war against a democratically elected government,” referring to Somalia.

At the time Mr. Meshal went to Somalia, Ethiopian troops, with backing from the United States, were massing on the border preparing to invade, and the Islamist administration in Somalia was calling for Muslims to come to fight a jihad.

Human rights groups and Mr. Meshal’s lawyer say they find it hard to accept that the United States was not complicit in his deportations.

“What we have learned so far about the plight of Mr. Meshal raises grave questions about the United States’ involvement in the illegal rendition and possible torture of an American citizen,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, who is representing the family. “It is simply implausible that an American citizen was secretly rendered from Kenya to Somalia without the United States’ knowledge and approval.”

During interrogations by American officials in Kenya, Mr. Meshal, who was born in the United States, said he had gone to Somalia because he wanted to help rebuild that country as an Islamic state, an American official said.

Mr. Meshal fled after the fighting broke out, and reached Kenya in late January, American officials and Reprieve and Cageprisoners said. He was seized and put in a Nairobi jail.

The F.B.I. interrogated him several times.

He was usually taken from his cell and interviewed for few hours, but the last time, he was gone for nearly 10 hours, said Mohammed Ezzoueck, a British citizen who had also fled Somalia and had been picked up in Kenya. He shared a cell with Mr. Meshal. Mr. Ezzoueck said he too had been fingerprinted and photographed by the F.B.I., but not questioned.

In an interview here on Thursday, Mr. Ezzoueck said Mr. Meshal had told him that there were two F.B.I. agents at the interviews, one tough, the other more friendly. Mr. Meshal did not complain of physical abuse, Mr. Ezzoueck said.

Mr. Meshal’s family in New Jersey was notified by the State Department and the F.B.I. that he was being held, and was told that after it sent an airline ticket, he would be released, an American official and Mr. Meshal’s lawyer said.

Then something went awry. Mr. Meshal was shackled and blindfolded and put on a plane and sent to Somalia, according to a flight log obtained by Reprieve.org.uk. Mr. Ezzoueck said he was also on the flight.

Through efforts of the British Government, Mr. Ezzoueck and three other British citizens were released in mid-February. Mr. Meshal was taken to Ethiopia in late February.

The American Embassy in Addis Ababa did not see Mr. Meshal until Wednesday, Mr. Casey said. He did not complain of any mistreatment, Mr. Casey added.


Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting from Kenya.