ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ

With a report from Canadian Press

Canada should use its aid to Ethiopia as a lever to force the government to release a Canadian held there as part of an alleged anti-terrorism "rendition" program, the man's lawyer says.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, meanwhile, acknowledged yesterday for the first time that Bashir Makhtal, who came to Canada as an 11-year-old refugee from Somalia, was being held in Ethiopia after being arrested in Kenya.

"We know that he is in Ethiopia and we have made, and continue to make, representations there and in Ottawa to get access to Mr. Bashir," Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Réjean Beaulieu said. "But so far we have not been allowed to meet him."

That's not good enough, says Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman.

"Canada should be using its large aid program as leverage to release Mr. Makhtal," he said.

Canada's total aid to Ethiopia in 2004-2005 was $108.39-million, and the Canadian International Development Agency designates it as a "country of concentration," one of the nine in the world where it focuses its efforts.

Ethiopia is currently the country in sub-Saharan Africa to which Canada grants the most international assistance, which it co-ordinates with the Ethiopian government, international institutions and the other donor countries.

Mr. Waldman, backed up by New York-based Human Rights Watch, says that his client was arrested at the Kenya-Somalia border in December and sent to Ethiopia after three weeks in detention in Kenya.

The Ethiopian embassy in Ottawa said yesterday that chaos there has prevented officials from determining the whereabouts of Mr. Makhtal.

Once there is enough order to determine the facts, Ethiopia will provide "first-hand information to the Canadian government," said embassy spokeman Abdurahim Ali.

Mr. Makhtal was among dozens who fled Somalia after the armed conflict between the Union of Islamic Courts and the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia and Ethiopia.

His family has denied that he is a member of the Union of Islamic Courts. He is also alleged to have links to the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist group fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Eastern Ethiopia.

But Mr. Waldman said these are innuendos similar to the campaign of leaks used against Maher Arar while he was being held and tortured in Syria:

"It seems that any notorious regime can seek to justify violations of human rights simply by implying that the detainee might in some way be connected to terrorism."

CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating prisoners in Ethiopia, The Associated Press has reported. The Ethiopian government denies holding secret prisoners.

Mr. Waldman said that his client was deported from Kenya to Mogadishu and then to Addis Ababa two days before his petition for habeas corpus was to be heard in the Kenyan Supreme Court.

 

Yayacanada