Ethiopia frees wife of top African al Qaeda suspect

NAIROBI, May 26 (Reuters) The wife of one of Africa's most wanted al Qaeda operatives has been released in Ethiopia after she was detained trying to leave Somalia during fighting over the New Year, a Muslim rights group said today.

Halima Badroudine, the wife of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, was freed with her children and seven others, the chairman of Kenya's Muslim Human Rights Forum, Alamin Kimathi, told Reuters.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted list of terrorists, and there is a 5 million dollar reward for information that leads to his capture.

The U.S. Government has indicted the Comoros-born suspect in federal court for his alleged involvement in the August 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 240 people.

The former school teacher is said to be a master of disguise, bomb-making and forgery, carries numerous passports, speaks five languages and has a fondness for baseball caps.

''That brings the total to 22 people released from detention,'' Kimathi said, following the ''rendition'' of suspects on the Kenya-Somalia border as thousands fled the war raging in the Horn of Africa nation over the New Year.

Aid agency Amnesty International has said 85 people were unlawfully sent from Kenya via Somalia and held in Ethiopia, a detention some rights groups have dubbed an ''African Guantanamo''.

REUTERS RN PM2135