BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday Iraqi authorities were still running a jail they said had been shut over a year ago after reports of prisoners being beaten and electrocuted, but the government denied this, saying the site was empty.

The New York-based watchdog and other critics of the administration of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accuse it of pushing Iraq back towards authoritarianism by cracking down on protests, harassing opponents and torturing detainees.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the prison, known as Camp Honor, is inside Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone, an area that houses most government offices and foreign embassies.

Camp Honor is a former U.S. military base of more than 15 buildings that was handed over to Iraqi forces in 2006. The last U.S. forces left the country in December.

A spokesman for Iraq’s human rights ministry told Reuters that the information received by Human Rights Watch was inaccurate and politically motivated.

“Camp Honor was closed at the start of 2011 and all inmates were transported to other official jails,” Kamil Ameen said.

“Last week a monitoring team from the human rights ministry went to Camp Honor detention center and found it totally empty.”

BAGHDAD, April 23 (Reuters) – Iraq, locked in a public row with neighbouring Turkey, has summoned Ankara’s ambassador in Baghdad to protest at critical remarks by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, the foreign ministry said on Monday.

The envoy, Younis Demerer, heard the Iraqi complaint on Sunday after several days of charge and counter-charge.

Erdogan accused his Iraqi counterpart Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday of stoking conflict between Shi’ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Kurds through “self-centred” behaviour.

Maliki fired back that Turkey was becoming a “hostile state” with a sectarian agenda, saying it was meddling in Iraqi affairs and trying to establish regional “hegemony”.

Erdogan returned to the fray on Saturday, saying: “If we respond to Mr. Maliki, we give him the opportunity to show off.”

Analysts say mainly Sunni Turkey is worried that growing tensions in Iraq and violence in their mutual neighbour Syria may lead to a wider Sunni-Shi’ite conflict in the region.

Erdogan’s government has also recently forged close ties with Masoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which is embroiled in a row with the Baghdad government over claims to the city of Kirkuk and the region’s oil.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Friday branded Turkey a “hostile state” with a sectarian agenda, the latest in a series of bitter exchanges between the neighbors.

Maliki was responding to comments made by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday in which Erdogan accused the Iraqi leader of fanning tensions between the country’s Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds with his “self-centered” ways.

“The recent announcements by Mr. Erdogan represent another return to flagrant interference in Iraqi internal affairs,” Maliki said in a statement on his website.

“His announcements have a sectarian dimension. To insist on continuing these internal and regional policies will harm Turkish interests and make it a hostile state for all.”

Maliki accused Turkey of trying to establish “hegemony” in the region.

Sectarian tensions flared in Iraq in December when the Shi’ite-led government tried to remove Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq and sought an arrest warrant for Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges he ran death squads.

Erdogan made his comments on Thursday after a meeting in Istanbul with Masoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, who has cultivated close relations with Ankara.

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Five hundred years ago, an Imam who ruled much of what is now Somalia, led a daring invasion of Christian Ethiopia, looting monasteries, burning down churches and slaying all who resisted.

Centuries on, memories of Imam Ahmad Gragn still haunt both countries, and echoes of that long and bloody history still ripple across the Horn of Africa region which considers Somalia the greatest threat to its stability.

Back then, the Ethiopians were beleaguered as the invaders occupied some two-thirds of the country. Help eventually came in the form of 400 Portuguese musketeers, who sailed into Massawa port and embarked on a six-day march to the front.

Gragn had his backers too. Reinforcements from Arabia soon rolled in alongside a gift from the Ottoman Empire: 900 of its famously hardened musket experts. The war lasted over a decade.

Fast forward to the present day, and with Ethiopian troops deploying over the border again last month to fight Islamist rebels linked to al Qaeda, the latest chapter of a book with few uplifting passages was written.

Though present-day incursions and clashes are driven by strategic motivations and regional politicking against the backdrop of the global war on terror, those centuries-old grudges, raids and musket-battles still shape events.

“In Ethiopia, the damage which Gragn did has never been forgotten,” Ethiopia expert, Paul Henze, wrote in a book on the country’s history, Layers of Time.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi plucked some fluff from his flowing golden robes, poured himself another steaming cup of tea and continued with his lecture, not seeming to notice the wide yawns around him. It was 2 a.m. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was dozing in a corner.

The leaders’ rigid stares and sour faces at an African Union summit in 2009, witnessed by journalists peering through a gap in the curtains, showed how most African leaders felt about the continent’s self-styled “King of Kings.” “There goes the sideshow clown,” one African diplomat muttered, as Gaddafi swept out of the room and told the waiting journalists to get some sleep.

Now, the man whose theatrics overshadowed their summits for so long is dead and buried, and sub-Saharan African leaders are trying to assess what a world without Gaddafi will mean for them, according to interviews with a dozen or so African diplomats in Tripoli. Some enjoyed substantial investments and gifts from his oil coffers. But many also hated what they saw as his meddling, even while they paraded solidarity with a fellow African who saw himself as an anti-colonial revolutionary.

African ambassadors and diplomats say they are already starting to feel the impact of the shift in power from Gaddafi to his enemies. Many feel frozen out by Libya’s interim rulers, the National Transitional Council (NTC). Some suspect the new government is even going to want some of Gaddafi’s gifts back. Whatever happens, Gaddafi’s vision of a united Africa — always quixotic — is gone.

“He made us feel important,” one told Reuters. “But there aren’t so many of us being invited to sit and break bread with NTC leaders. They think that we sided with Gaddafi.”

PRIORITIES

That perception has arisen in part from a belief among NTC and western officials that the African Union’s attempt to mediate during the civil war was designed to protect Gaddafi. For Libya’s new leaders, the western allies who helped them to power will be more important.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Jobs, normality and democracy are high on the wish lists of Libyans questioned on the streets of their capital, but after months of civil war, meeting their expectations is a challenging assignment for the “grey men” now trying to run the country.

Few know anything about their new interim prime minister, Abdurrahim El-Keib, who before his surprise appointment to the most difficult job in post-Gaddafi Libya was an academic and electrical engineer.

As head of the interim government, he has to assert the National Transitional Council (NTC)’s control of a fractured country awash with weapons, revive the economy and introduce Libya to democracy.

“I came back to this country to take this tool in my hands,” Saad Helmi, a 30-year-old revolutionary fighter, told Reuters in Tripoli’s old city, holding up a machinegun with ribbons in the colors of Libya’s new flag wrapped around its handle and his head.

“Now I want to put it down and replace it with a pen or a laptop. I want to stay here for a job,” said Helmi, who lived in Scotland for ten years.

Jobs were regularly mentioned on Tripoli’s streets, many young men saying it was unemployment that made them fight the government of Muammar Gaddafi, now dead and buried.

Libya’s top two politicians, Keib and NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, have tough tasks ahead: building institutions from scratch, reviving the oil industry, disarming militias and trying to heal the scars of war in a country with regional and religious divides among its leading politicians.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Having picked a new prime minister, Libya’s fractious interim ruling council must now restore its own credibility, dented by unseemly haggling over Muammar Gaddafi’s rotting remains.

The nature of the man’s death – insulted, battered and abused before being shot dead – has done some damage to its standing, with many observers asking themselves, just who are the men who have replaced him?

“The good guys,” one Western diplomat insisted when asked that question in Tripoli last week.

But the halo awarded to the so far unelected National Transitional Council (NTC), hurriedly put together as the war against Gaddafi started, is under temporary review by their foreign backers as the headaches of state-building emerge.

The selection by the NTC of little known academic Abdurrahim El-Keib as interim prime minister on Monday also highlighted how mysterious the internal workings of the new ruling group can be to perplexed diplomats, journalists and Libya analysts, as well as – especially – to an increasingly impatient Libyan public.

“Your time is done, NTC,” a young Libyan blogger wrote this week. “Thank you – the Libyan people.”

Many of them are worried about whether a coalition of armed factions that were bound mostly by hatred of Gaddafi can hold together now his regime has crumbled and he has been buried.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Having picked a new prime minister, Libya’s fractious interim ruling council must now restore its own credibility, dented by unseemly haggling over Muammar Gaddafi’s rotting remains.

The nature of the man’s death – insulted, battered and abused before being shot dead – has done some damage to its standing, with many observers asking themselves, just who are the men who have replaced him?

“The good guys,” one Western diplomat insisted when asked that question in Tripoli last week.

But the halo awarded to the so far unelected National Transitional Council (NTC), hurriedly put together as the war against Gaddafi started, is under temporary review by their foreign backers as the headaches of state-building emerge.

The selection by the NTC of little known academic Abdurrahim El-Keib as interim prime minister on Monday also highlighted how mysterious the internal workings of the new ruling group can be to perplexed diplomats, journalists and Libya analysts, as well as – especially – to an increasingly impatient Libyan public.

“Your time is done, NTC,” a young Libyan blogger wrote this week. “Thank you – the Libyan people.”

Many of them are worried about whether a coalition of armed factions that were bound mostly by hatred of Gaddafi can hold together now his regime has crumbled and he has been buried.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will not escape justice and should be tried in Libya for murder, corruption and “many things” before an international court questions him, the country’s interim justice minister said on Monday.

Mohammed al-Alagi said he did not want Saif al-Islam, now on the run, to meet the same fate as his father, former leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was beaten, abused and shot after forces of Libya’s National Transitional Council captured him on October 20.

But he said anything could happen if there was a battle when Saif al-Islam was found.

“It depends when and where they got him. If he was under fire, in crossfire, for example, nobody could guarantee he would survive. But if they arrested him, I think he would be safe,” Alagi told Reuters in an interview.

NTC officials have said Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, but widely circulated video footage of him in the hands of his captors suggests otherwise.

“It’s better if he (Saif al-Islam) faces trial in Libya but that needs guarantees of a fair trial of international standards. The Libyan justice system is normal. The Libyan justice system should try him here first and then, if he needs to, he can face international justice,” Alagi said.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) wants to try the 39-year-old for crimes against humanity. Its prosecutor said on Sunday he had “substantial evidence” that the London-educated Saif al-Islam had helped hire mercenaries to attack Libyan protesters against his father’s 42-year rule.

TRIPOLI/BEIJING (Reuters) – The International Criminal Court said Saturday that Libya’s Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was in contact via intermediaries about surrendering for trial, but it also had information mercenaries were trying to spirit him to a friendly African nation.

U.S. military and government representatives held security talks in neighboring Niger with local officials in Agadez, which has been a way station for other Libyan fugitives, including another son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saadi. A Reuters reporter saw a U.S. military plane at Agadez airport.

A top Agadez regional official declined to say what the talks with the Americans were about, but spoke of escape plans by Saif al-Islam and former Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, both wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity.

“Senussi is being extricated from Mali toward a country that is a non-signatory to the (ICC) convention. I am certain that they will both (Senussi and Saif al-Islam) be extricated by plane, one from Mali, the other from Niger,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

He said there were at least 10 airstrips in the north of Niger near the Libyan border that could be used to whisk Saif al-Islam out of the country.

A member of parliament from northern Mali, Ibrahim Assaleh Ag Mohamed, denied Senussi was in his country and said neither he nor Saif al-Islam would be accepted if they tried to enter.

The arrival of the U.S. delegation followed remarks by Mohamed Anako, president of Agadez region, who said he would give Saif al-Islam refuge. “Libya and Niger are brother countries and cousins … so we will welcome him in,” he said.