Amnesty International says it is increasingly concerned about America’s attitude to human rights in the wake of this week’s arrest of five suspected al-Qaeda operatives and their secret removal from Malawi.
The human rights watchdog said in a statement issued on Wednesday that the secret handover into custody of the five foreign nationals had ”heightened” its concern about the US attitude to the rights of people detained in the war on terror.
”Once again it seems that the US may have been involved in a transfer which circumvents basic human rights protections and national law,” the statement says.
”Ironically, this alleged transfer took place on the same day that the State Department released a report about how much the US is doing to promote human rights worldwide,” the group said.
The men were detained on Sunday night at a secret location in the southern African country without being allowed access to their lawyers. They are suspected of funneling money to Osama bin Laden’s terror group.
Authorities said they included Mahmud Sardar Issa, a Sudanese who heads a charitable organisation called the Islamic Zakat Fund Trust in Blantyre. Another was identified as Fahad Ral Bahli, of Saudi Arabia, the director of the Malawi branch of Registered Trustees of the Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz Special Committee on
Relief.
Arif Ulusam, another Turkish man and an Islamic scholar from Kenya were also among those arrested, authorities said.
Officials in Malawi said the men had been on the CIA’s ”watch list” since the twin 1998 bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. US authorities blame al-Qaeda for the attacks. Four men linked to the group were convicted in US federal court in 2001 for their roles in the bombings.
London-based Amnesty says there are indications that the men were flown out of Malawi aboard a chartered flight in the company of US and Malawian officials and that it is not known where the men are currently held.
”If true, this episode would be reminiscent of the unlawful transfer of six Algerians from Bosnia-Herzegovina in January 2002,” reads the statement.
”Those men were subsequently spirited away to the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay where they are believed to remain, held without charge or trial, or access to the courts, legal counsel or relatives.”
”The US authorities must make public what they know about the whereabouts of these five men,” reads the statement.
It further adds that assurances must be given that the detainees will not be subjected to any form of torture or ill-treatment during interrogation.
”If they are in US custody, they should be brought before a court as soon as possible to be able to challenge the lawfulness of their detention,” it says.
Amnesty also demands that if the men are suspected of crimes, they should be promptly charged, provided legal counsel, and brought to trial within a reasonable time in accordance with fair trial norms, without recourse to the death penalty, or else released.
US embassy officials in Malawi would not comment about the circumstances which had lead to the arrest of the five. Meanwhile, lawyers for the suspects on Thursday began a contempt of court application in the Blantyre High Court. Malawi’s director of public prosecutions, Fahad Assani, has described the action as a ”futile exercise.”
Other African countries have been used as al-Qaeda staging grounds, but Malawi had previously not been a major focus of investigations into the group.
The poor, landlocked southern African nation has a 20% Muslim population.
Africa is considered a relatively easy target for terrorists, with its porous borders and relatively lax police presence. ‒ Sapa-AP