US man sues FBI agents over detention in Somalia, Ethiopia

WASHINGTON (AFP)— A US citizen who alleges he was illegally detained and interrogated in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia has filed a lawsuit seeking compensation from the FBI agents he says were responsible for his ordeal
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In legal documents obtained by AFP on Wednesday, Amir Meshal says he was held "in stark and inhuman conditions without charge or legal basis" and subjected to "intense interrogation" by US agents.

Meshal, a Muslim born and raised in the US state of New Jersey, was first detained in January 2007 fleeing Somalia as part of a joint US-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation on the Kenya-Somalia border.

He alleges that federal agents declined to return him the United States "because he did not admit an involvement with al Qaeda."

"One US official indicated that Mr Meshal was not brought home because there was insufficient evidence to charge and jail Mr Meshal in the United States," the lawsuit said.

After being detained in Kenya, Meshal alleges he was then "renditioned" to a detention facility in Somalia and then another in Ethiopia.

During the three months he was held in Ethiopia and Somalia he was interrogated only by FBI agents, according to the suit.

Meshal claims he traveled to Mogadishu in 2006, when relative calm had descended on the Somali capital, hoping to study Islam, but soon found himself caught up in fighting that broke out at the beginning of 2007.

The lawsuit says FBI agents repeatedly interrogated him, accusing him of being a member of Al Qaeda and threatening to transfer him to Israel, where they said authorities could "make him disappear," or Egypt, where they "have ways of making him talk."

Meshal also alleges he was threatened with "serious physical and mental abuse."

After being transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia, Meshal spent three months in detention, and appeared three times before a closed Ethiopian military tribunal, before suddenly and without explanation being flown back to the United States, where he was not charged with a crime.

Meshal claims his experience was part of the so-called extraordinary rendition program set up the administration of former US president George W. Bush to transfer terror suspects to countries where they could be interrogated without US constitutional protections.

Since coming into office, President Barack Obama has banned use of the program.