AN AMERICAN SUES FBI FOR WRONGFUL DETENTION IN AFRICA

NEW YORK TIMES
By SCOTT SHANE
November 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — A New Jersey man who contends that he was detained and mistreated in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in 2007 with the approval of the United States filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against F.B.I. agents and other unidentified American officials who he says interrogated him and threatened him with execution.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, contends that the detention and treatment of the man, Amir Meshal, violated the Constitution and other laws and seeks unspecified damages. Mr. Meshal, represented by lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Yale Law School, asserts that his mental suffering amounted to torture and describes his forced transfers as an illegal use of rendition, the transport of a prisoner for interrogation.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman, Bill Carter, said officials would not comment on the lawsuit.

Mr. Meshal, 26, an American citizen and a Muslim whose parents immigrated from Egypt, said in the lawsuit that he traveled to Egypt in 2005 and then to Somalia in 2006, hoping to experience life under Islamist rule. In December 2006, he said he fled to Kenya as the Islamic courts that had seized power in Somalia faced off against rival Somali forces backed by Ethiopia.

He said that he was captured by soldiers in Kenya and that he was jailed and questioned by Americans who he believes were F.B.I. agents. The lawsuit asserts that the agents accused Mr. Meshal of working for Al Qaeda and threatened him, but it does not say he was physically harmed.

In February 2007, the lawsuit says, Mr. Meshal was flown to Somalia and then to Ethiopia, where he was held for more than three months and repeatedly questioned by American interrogators who he believes worked for the F.B.I. His hands were cuffed behind his back whenever he was in his cell, and he was sometimes kept in solitary confinement, the lawsuit says.

In May 2007, after inquiries about Mr. Meshal by news organizations and Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, he was released and flown back to the United States.

“No American citizen should ever be subjected to what Amir went through, and the government officials who were responsible for what happened should be held accountable,” said Jonathan Hafetz of the A.C.L.U., who represents Mr. Meshal.