By Andrew Cawthorne NAIROBI, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Kenya has sent 34 prisoners shackled hand-and-foot on a plane to Somalia after arresting them near the border on suspicion of belonging to an ousted Islamist movement, their representatives said on Sunday. The 34, who a lawyer said included one Canadian and three Eritreans, were among scores of suspected Islamist fighters and supporters rounded up by Kenyan forces after the recent war to end the movement's six-month rule of south Somalia. The deportees arrived in Mogadishu late on Saturday and were handed over to the custody of Ethiopian soldiers backing Somali authorities, Somali government sources confirmed. "They were shackled with chains on their feet and handcuffs on their hands behind their backs. Just like Guantanamo," Kenyan lawyer Harun Ndubi told Reuters, referring to the U.S. base in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held. "Ethiopia regards them as an enemy, so I really fear they could face the same fate as Saddam Hussein now. Somalia is a failed state. How can they be given justice there?" Some Somali residents said the Islamists had been taken to the Halane military base near Mogadishu airport, which was notorious for executions during the rule of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, toppled in 1991. Somali officials could not confirm that. Ndubi said the transferred prisoners included a Canadian citizen, Bashir Ahmed Makhtat, who had told him he ran a second-hand clothes business in the region and was trying to cross the border overland when the war blocked other routes out. Makhtat was originally from Ogaden, an ethnically Somali region of Ethiopia, before going to Canada, where he was educated and trained, the lawyer said. Three other prisoners were from Eritrea -- Ethiopia's arch-foe -- and had also identified themselves as businessmen, involved in the charcoal trade, he said. VIOLENCE CONTINUES The Somali Islamists' forces were boosted by foreign Muslim fighters, particularly in the run-up to the open warfare in late December and early January. And while Ethiopia openly backed the government against the Islamists, Eritrea was accused of sending arms and soldiers to help the religious movement. Asmara denied that. Kenyan politician Farah Maalim, representing some of the Islamist suspects, also protested against their deportation. "I was denied access to them. I have been trying to get in touch with them in vain," he told the Standard newspaper. The transfer came after a fresh wave of violence in Somalia, where attackers suspected to be Islamist remnants have been striking government and Ethiopian military positions. A gunman fired an assault rifle at an Ethiopian convoy in a crowded animal market in Mogadishu on Saturday, triggering a shootout that killed at least four civilians, witnesses said. Mortars also hit the hilltop presidential palace, Villa Somalia, on Friday night, though nobody was hurt. An extra five Ethiopian tanks were deployed at the white-washed compound over the weekend, adding to four already there, witnesses said. With Islamist sources vowing a long guerrilla war against the Somali government and its allied Ethiopian forces, the African Union (AU) has approved a nearly 8,000-strong peacekeeping force for the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. But many doubt the AU's capacity to muster such a force, let alone tame Somalia. The nation of 10 million has been in anarchy since 1991, and famously defied the combined efforts of U.S. and U.N. peacekeepers in the early 1990s. Diplomats fear a dangerous vacuum if peacekeepers do not arrive before Ethiopian troops return home. Addis Ababa wants its soldiers out within days. (Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu)
