Ethiopia, under pressure for details on detainees in secret jails

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The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some are from Canada, Sweden and France. They also include citizens from Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Tunisia and Morocco.

Ethiopia was under pressure to release details of detainees from 19 countries held at secret prisons in the country, where U.S. agents have carried out interrogations in the hunt for al-Qaida in the Horn of Africa.

Canada, Eritrea and Sweden were lobbying Thursday for information about their citizens in Ethiopia, where human rights groups say hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally. An investigation by The Associated Press found that CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating the detainees.

Officials from Ethiopia, which has a troubling human rights record, were not immediately available for comment, but in the past have refused to acknowledge the existence of the prisons.

Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman said of Canadian citizen Bashir Makhtal: "We know that he is in Ethiopia." "We've been making, and continue to make, representations both here in Ottawa and in Ethiopia to get access to him," Beaulieu said.

Some detainees were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year, according to Kenyan officials and police. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland, they said.

The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP. They also include citizens from Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Tunisia and Morocco.