Human Rights Watch says at least 10 people are being detained without charges in Ethiopia, following an operation in early 2007 that covertly transferred terrorism suspects between countries in the Horn of Africa region. As Derek Kilner reports from VOA’s East Africa bureau in Nairobi, the group says the program was conducted with the complicity of the United States.

Suspects arrested in a clandestine anti-terrorism sweep in East Africa nearly two years ago and interrogated by United States personnel have been abandoned by their governments, a human rights group said in a report released Wednesday that also detailed accusations of torture. One Canadian and nine Kenyans are still in jail in Ethiopia without being charged after being arrested in 2007, and 22 other East Africans of various nationalities are missing, according to the report by Human Rights Watch. The men were among a group of about 90 people arrested in the months after Ethiopia toppled Somalia’s Islamist government at the end of 2006. They were suspected of being members of insurgent and Islamist groups and were detained in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

Nairobi – Somali Asha Hagi has dedicated much of her life to fighting for the rights of women and against the tide of violence that has ripped her country apart since 1991.

She was honoured for her work on Wednesday with the Right Livelihood Award, also called the Alternative Nobel Prize. More on PROFILE: Asha Hagi – tireless campaigner for women in lawless Somalia