From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Aug 11 2009 - 22:52:24 EDT
How a business trip imperilled a man's life
By David McDougall
>From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Canadian faces threat of execution after more than two years in Ethiopian
jail
Mohamed Osman Hassan never questioned his close friend and mentor Bashir
Makhtal when in early 2001 he announced plans to leave a well-paid job as
an information technologist at CIBC in Toronto for the unlikely sounding,
but lucrative, business of hawking used clothing across the volatile Horn
of Africa.
“He saw an opportunity,” said Mr. Hassan, who at the time was finishing
a degree in computer science at Brock University. “He's one of those
people that when they see an opportunity, they don't dither.”
So, in June of 2002, still paying the rent on his Scarborough apartment,
Mr. Makhtal, who had immigrated to Canada a decade earlier and once tended
his family's camels over a desiccated African countryside, set off from
Pearson International Airport on an extended business trip that would take
him to Dubai, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya and eventually even back to Somalia.
Today, the Canadian languishes in a tiny Ethiopian prison, isolated from
family, accused and convicted of terrorism, awaiting a grim judgment. What
he couldn't have known the day he stepped on that plane was that a
maelstrom of forces – a bloody civil conflict in Somalia, the global
campaign against terrorism, a vendetta against his conspicuously political
family – were converging to deprive him of his liberty and, perhaps, his
life.
For the past two-and-a-half years, Mr. Makhtal has been imprisoned in
Ethiopia. For much of that time he was held incommunicado in solitary
confinement and denied consular access.
On Monday he was convicted, but not sentenced, by a civilian court in Addis
Ababa on three counts of terrorism-related charges, each of which carries a
potential death penalty. He will be sentenced Monday and Canada, which has
been closely monitoring his case, says it will seek clemency if Mr. Makhtal
is given a death sentence.
Friends and family say it is all because of his name.
Bashir Ahmed Makhtal was born in 1969 in the Somali region of eastern
Ethiopia to a famously political family, the grandson of Makhtal Dahir, a
senior member of a separatist movement known as the Ogaden National
Liberation Front, which grew out of an ethnic Somali struggle against the
military dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The ONLF has been locked in
a bitter, at times violent conflict with the Ethiopian government. When his
father died, the 11-year-old boy was sent to begin a new life in Mogadishu
with his uncle, a Western-educated Somali diplomat.
It was there, under the apple and lemon trees in the large, well-tended
courtyard of his new and peaceful home, that he came to know Said Maktal,
his younger cousin by three years, who spells his name differently. The two
would grow up as brothers.
Now a 36-year old chemical lab technician living in Hamilton, Ont., by his
own accounts a typical Mogadishu kid, spoiled and immature, Said said he
was awed by his older, worldly cousin, who had come from afar. “If I
remember back then, it was fantastic. Bashir used to tell us amazing
stories that we never heard.”
As is customary, Mr. Makhtal, as the older cousin, was the first to go
abroad. He first went to school in Italy in 1989 before moving on to Canada
two years later, all the while supported by his uncle, who understood the
value of a Western education.
If your business is done, please get the hell out of there Said Maktal's
last words to his cousin Bashir before he was rounded up by authorities
Within a year of landing in Canada, Mr. Makhtal was working toward a
computer science degree at the DeVry Institute for Technology in Toronto,
on a career path that would land him a job at CIBC and BMO.
But Mr. Makhtal never forgot about his family back home. “Bashir always
said, ‘I come from a big family,' “ Said Maktal recalled. “ ‘I am
the only one who is outside. I have to work hard to support my family, my
nephews, my nieces.' “ It was in part this same sense of obligation
toward his family in Ethiopia that, according to Said Maktal, compelled Mr.
Makhtal to set aside his bank job and go into business for himself. He
headed back to Africa in 2002, and spent the next few years criss-crossing
eastern Africa and, from time to time, returning home to Canada to visit.
By all accounts, Mr. Makhtal's business ventures – importing used clothes
for re-sale in Africa – appeared to be going well.
“He looked fantastic,” recalled Said Maktal after seeing his cousin in
early 2005 on one of his periodic return visits to Toronto. “He looked
very happy. … even his clothes, he was never dressing in jeans any more.
He loved wearing suits.”
It was business that prompted Mr. Makhtal's fateful trip back to his
childhood home in Mogadishu in December, 2006.
“Guess what? Guess where I am?” Said Maktal remembers his cousin's
voice crackling over the cellphone. “I'm in our house, the house that we
grew up in.”
At the time, Mogadishu was under the control of a grassroots alliance known
as the Islamic Courts Union. Much to everyone's surprise, it had managed in
a few short months what countless previous efforts failed to achieve:
Mogadishu, perhaps the most violent, unstable place on Earth, had been
pacified.
But Mr. Makhtal's situation was more precarious than he realized. While for
ordinary Somalis, Mogadishu was experiencing an almost unknown period of
stability, alarm bells were going off in Washington.
In the post-9/11 world, Somalia had become a lesser-known frontier of the
war on terrorism. Of particular concern was the rise to prominence within
the Islamic Courts of certain figures with suspected links to terrorist
organizations. Something had to be done, and it was neighbouring Ethiopia
that was going to do it, invading Somalia with a tacit green light from the
United States. While Mr. Makhtal spoke with his cousin back in Hamilton,
rumours of an impending Ethiopian action were already circulating in the
news.
“If your business is done,” Said Maktal recalled telling his cousin,
“please get the hell out of there.” It would be close to a year before
they spoke again.
Mr. Makhtal knew enough about his family legacy to know that he didn't want
to fall into the hands of the Ethiopians. But on the day he was scheduled
to fly out of Mogadishu for Nairobi, it was already too late. Commercial
flights had been cancelled.
Left with no other choice, Mr. Makhtal, along with scores of others, fled
to the Kenyan border where he planned to cross by road. Instead, he would
be scooped up in an operation ostensibly aimed at capturing senior leaders
of the ICU.
While difficult to verify independently, here's what happened next
according to a combination of sworn affidavits from former detainees
collected in Kenya, accounts of court testimony from Mr. Makhtal documented
by Canadian officials and interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch: On
Dec. 31, just hours away from the border, Mr. Makhtal hired a car along
with seven others and drove to the Liboi transit centre, where he attempted
to cross into Kenya on his Canadian passport. All eight of the passengers
were immediately detained.
After being interrogated for several days at a regional police headquarters
about their involvement with the ICU, Mr. Makhtal and other prisoners were
transferred to a Nairobi police station where they were further
interrogated by the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, a U.S.-funded branch of the
Kenyan police force.
In apparent violation of Kenyan law, every effort was made to hold the
prisoners incommunicado and longer than the 14 days permitted without
charge. That was when alarmed members of the regular police force alerted a
local human rights group.
“Our contacts within the Kenyan police, very high up there, told us this
has nothing to do with them,” said Al-Amin Kimathi, chair of the
Nairobi-based Muslim Human Rights Forum, which managed to gain accesses to
some of the prisoners, who included a pregnant women and a 9-year-old
child.
Mr. Kimathi's organization had hired lawyers and was preparing a series of
habeas corpus petitions when the prisoners disappeared.
In the early hours of Jan. 20, the prisoners, including Mr. Makhtal, were
called out of their cells and transported to the international airport in
Nairobi where, according to Human Rights Watch, they were handcuffed,
blindfolded and put on a chartered aircraft headed back to Mogadishu.
It was the first of three flights that in January and February of 2007
would transfer at least 80 prisoners, including Kenyan, U.S., British and
Swedish nationals, to jails in Ethiopia, where many said they were
interrogated by U.S. intelligence.
But Mr. Makhtal's case was different. It was all about his family, and a
birthright that left his name on the executive committee of the ONLF, even
though friends and family claim he was never involved with the group in any
way.
Once in Ethiopian custody, Mr. Makhtal disappeared.
Back in Canada, Said Maktal began the tireless task of bringing his
cousin's case to the attention of the Canadian government, first convincing
Foreign Affairs officials to acknowledge that he was even in Ethiopia and
later sending petitions to the Prime Minister, even retaining the
Toronto-based human rights lawyer, Lorne Waldman.
“He would have done the same thing for me,” said Mr. Maktal,
interviewed between a nightshift and organizing an impromptu protest in
Ottawa for the following day in a last ditch effort to get some extra
publicity ahead of his cousin's sentencing. “Actually, he would have done
it for anyone.”
It wasn't until earlier this year that his efforts began paying off, in
part because of the involvement of federal Transport Minister John Baird,
who took an interest in the case after hearing from the Somali community in
his riding.
In January, Mr. Makhtal was transferred out of solitary confinement and his
case moved to a civilian court where, in March, he was formerly charged for
his alleged involvement in the ONLF.
But human rights groups and legal experts have criticized the trial for
being little more than a kangaroo court, which has repeatedly failed to
produce credible witnesses or evidence linking Mr. Makhtal to the ONLF, and
has refused to accept evidence, including a letter form the movement's top
brass, stating that Mr. Makhtal was not a member.
“Everyone we spoke to who observed the trial,” said Mr. Waldman, “was
convinced that they had absolutely no case, and yet he was convicted, which
is really just a testimony to the unfair legal system.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said in a statement Friday that
consular officials have visited Mr. Makhtal as recently as July 28, and
that his case remains a priority for the Government of Canada.
“The government of Canada has sought assurances from the government of
Ethiopia that the death penalty will not be applied in this case. We will
seek clemency for Mr. Makhtal if the death penalty is imposed.”
But until Mr. Makhtal is released, his cousin says he won't be able to
rest, even though it's taking a heavy toll.
“Two nights ago, my wife told me, ‘You're not the same that I married.'
That kills you. … “ “But again you look at the other side and it's
like the whole world is against your cousin, and you're the only person he
has.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
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