Sweden tells Ethiopia to release three nationals

STOCKHOLM, May 3 (Reuters) Sweden has demanded Ethiopia immediately release three of its citizens under detention since January unless the legal grounds for holding them are clarified, the Swedish foreign ministry said today.

A 17-year-old Swedish national was released last month.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Petra Hansson said Swedish officials summoned the Ethiopian ambassador yesterday to lodge their strongest-ever protest over the detention.

''We called for their immediate release if the legal grounds cannot be specified, which they haven't been,'' Hansson said.

She said there had been no response yet from Ethiopia and that she could not specify how Sweden will press its case.

''So far we've been successful in ... that the 17-year-old girl who was previously held in the same way as those three that are still there has been able to leave Ethiopia and come home to Sweden,'' Hansson said, adding that she could not disclose the names of those being held.

According to media reports, the Swedes were among scores of people seized in Kenya while fleeing the conflict in Somalia. The foreign ministry said it could not confirm where the Swedish citizens were arrested.

Former Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said there were hundreds of prisoners being kept by the Ethiopians.

''There are hundreds of prisoners in these jails and Ethiopian forces have moved 500 Somali detainees to a new Guatanamo prison in Addis Ababa,'' he said, according to Al Arabiya television's Web site.

It was not immediately clear how Ahmed, who is in exile in Yemen and has the support of Ethiopia's bitter rival, Eritrea, got the information.

''There were prisoners from the time of the fighting between the Islamic Courts and the interim government but Ethiopian forces and those of the puppet government are now carrying out a new round-up.'' The Islamist group that Ahmed led often made claims that could not be independently verified.

Reuters SG DB1858