WASHINGTON — An American Muslim who was captured while
fleeing Somalia in 2007 accused two FBI agents and two other U.S. officials
Tuesday of illegally interrogating him and threatening torture while he was
allegedly held at U.S. behest in Kenyan and Ethiopian jails.
In a lawsuit filed on behalf of Amir Meshal of Tinton Falls,
N.J., the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that he’d been held in
“stark and inhuman conditions” and had “suffered physical
injuries, pain and suffering, severe mental anguish, as well as loss of income
and livelihood.”
U.S. officials “threatened Mr. Meshal with serious
physical and mental abuse, told him he would be made to ‘disappear,’ and denied
him access to counsel and other due process protections,” said the
lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court.
Jonathan Hafetz, an ACLU attorney, said his client is
seeking unspecified damages. An FBI spokesman declined to discuss the case
because it’s an active lawsuit.
A series of McClatchy Newspapers reports in 2007 raised
questions about whether the Bush administration asked the Kenyan and Ethiopian
governments to hold Meshal for interrogation about alleged terrorist links.
The lawsuit named FBI agents named Chris Higgenbotham and
Steve Hersem as taking part in the interrogations. Both were identified during
a hearing in 2007 for Daniel Maldonado, a Texas resident who was arrested on
the Somalia-Kenya border around the same time as Meshal and pleaded guilty to
receiving military-style training from a foreign terrorist organization.
The lawsuit also named two U.S. officials identified only as
“Tim” and “Dennis.” “Tim” participated in
interrogations of Meshal was in Kenya and Ethiopia; and “Dennis”
questioned Meshal in Ethiopia, it said.
The lawsuit accused the defendants of violating Meshal’s right
to due process and his constitutional protections against illegal detention and
breaking a U.S. law banning torture “in an effort to coerce him into
confessing that he was connected to and/or supported al Qaida.”
Meshal repeatedly denied the allegation and has never been
charged with any crime since his return to the U.S. on May 26, 2007.
Meshal was captured in late January 2007 by Kenyan border
guards as he fled Somalia after Ethiopia invaded Somalia.
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The lawsuit said that during two weeks of incarceration,
Meshal was removed from his Kenyan jail, taken to a private guesthouse and
interrogated at least three times by Hersem, Higgenbotham and “Tim.”
Meshal was coerced into signing waivers of his rights,
denied a lawyer and told that unless he confessed to links with al Qaida, he’d
be sent for interrogation to Egypt, turned over to Israel, where he’d
“disappear,” or returned to war-torn Somalia, the lawsuit said.
After a Muslim human rights group learned of his
incarceration without charges and filed a lawsuit seeking his release, Kenyan
authorities flew Meshal back to Somalia and turned him over to Ethiopian
officials. They held him in Addis Ababa for more than three months without
charges.
Meshal was regularly questioned by “Tim” and
“Dennis” while in Ethiopian custody, but was never interrogated by
Ethiopian officials, the lawsuit said.
The plaintiff was told that “his truthfulness now would
determine if he would ever go home,” according to the lawsuit.
Meshal was allowed to speak to a U.S. consular official only
after a McClatchy Newspapers report disclosed that he was being detained
without charges in Ethiopia. After his congressman, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J,
intervened in the case, he was released and never charged.
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
