have imprisoned hundreds without charge. The police forces, whose salaries are partly sponsored by the UK, are linked to extortion, torture and even extra-judicial killings.
The deputy police chief has a home in Birmingham.

And some leading officials - one of them a former minister who is a British citizen with a home in London - are accused of obstructing the delivery of humanitarian food aid and medicines desperately needed by refugees in the camps.

How it all went wrong is the latest instalment in the familiar story of the disastrous US-led 'war on terror'.

Seventeen months ago, Ethiopian forces seized the city from Islamist militants and installed the new government. Washington - together with Britain and most of the world community - supported this military solution to Somalia's long-running civil war, even though it meant the intervention of outside forces.

During Islamist rule, Mogadishu had experienced its most peaceful spell since 1991. But the West wanted the new regime to hunt down al-Qaeda and its allies in the region.

Yet US air-strikes since the invasion have

killed perhaps two senior al-Qaeda-linked targets - and many Somalis argue the hunt for a handful of individual terrorists hardly justifies plunging a nation into chaos.

And instead of just fighting 'terrorists', government forces - who are from rival clans to the majority of Mogadishu's current population - are alleged to have also set about prosecuting a tribal war.

Government leaders I spoke to denied all allegations made against them, though when I showed Jalle the radio transcript quoted above, he admitted he had said "some of it".

Like other theatres in the 'war on terror', solutions in Somalia get harder to find as time passes. Fresh attempts at peace talks collapsed this month. A small African Union mission has failed to fully deploy and is seen by the insurgents as a target, which does not bode well for fresh UN promises to beef up peace-keeping operations.

In Mogadishu, clan elders repeatedly told me they wanted Britain's help to sort out their mess. But they said the fact that Britain finances a government that is linked to serious human rights abuses only makes things worse.
Aidan Hartley reports from Somalia for Channel 4's 'Dispatches', 8pm, Monday May 26.