Amnesty International accuses Pakistan of illegal detentions for U.S. rewards

By: MUNIR AHMAD - Associated Press | Friday, September 29, 2006 4:45 PM PDT ∞

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan illegally detained innocent people on suspicion of terrorism, secretly imprisoned them, and transferred them to U.S. custody for money, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said Friday.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in a memoir released days ago, wrote that his government has earned bounties totaling "millions of dollars" from the transfer of terror suspects to U.S. authorities.

Hundreds of Pakistanis and foreigners were rounded up in Pakistan on suspicion of links to terrorism since the U.S.-led war on terror started after the Sept. 11 attacks, Amnesty said in a report, titled "Human Rights Ignored in the War on Terror."

"The war on terror has added a new layer of human rights violations to the existing patterns of abuses (in Pakistan)," said Angelika Pathak, an Amnesty researcher who helped prepare the report.

"The phenomenon of enforced disappearance was virtually unknown before the war on terror," Pathak said.

Amnesty suggested the lure of U.S. government rewards led in many cases to the illegal arrests of people, including women and children, in Pakistan.

Pakistan also has its own bounty program that provides money for the capture of suspected terrorists, which the Amnesty report did not take into consideration.

"Bounty hunters -- including police officers and local people -- have captured individuals of different nationalities, often apparently at random, and sold them into U.S. custody," said Claudio Cordone, senior director of research at Amnesty International.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam rejected the report's allegations that Pakistan illegally detained people in exchange for money.

"Whenever we arrest any foreign terror suspect, we try to send him back to the country he belongs," she told The Associated Press. "In most of the cases, such suspects are not accepted by their own government."

"Naturally, we cannot keep them here," she said.

Amnesty's allegations, largely based on interviews with former detainees, came days after Musharraf revealed in his memoir that Pakistan had captured 689 al-Qaida terror suspects and turned over 369 to Washington.

"We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars," Musharraf wrote in his book, "In The Line of Fire," without specifying how much was paid.

Cordone said in a statement that many people detained in Pakistan ended up in secret locations or at U.S. prisons, including Guantanamo Bay and Bagram, north of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

"Hundreds of people have been picked up in mass arrests, many have been sold to the U.S.A. as 'terrorists' simply on the word of their captor, and hundreds have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air base or secret detention centers run by the U.S.A.," he said. "The road to Guantanamo very literally starts in Pakistan."

Amnesty said the increase in enforced disappearances and holding of suspects incommunicado puts such detainees at "risk of torture and unlawful transfer to third countries."

Numerous detainees claimed U.S. agents were present during interrogations in Pakistan, the Amnesty report said. It also details the "unlawful transfer" of detainees into U.S. custody, including a Pakistani chicken farmer who was accused of being a deputy foreign minister for the Taliban and sent to Guantanamo.

Many innocents, including children, have also been rounded up in Pakistan under the pretext of the war on terror, the Amnesty report said.

"Some (children) were arrested alongside their adult relatives, some were themselves alleged to be terror suspects and some were held as hostages to make relatives give themselves up or confess," Amnesty stated.

The report also detailed the detentions and killings of reporters and activists allegedly targeted by Pakistani authorities. These include Hayatullah Khan, a journalist whose bullet-riddled body was found in the North Waziristan tribal region in June, more than six months after being detained.

Khan disappeared Dec. 5, 2005, days after photographing shrapnel from a Hellfire missile allegedly fired by an unmanned American aerial drone that killed a wanted Egyptian al-Qaida figure, Hamza Rabia, in the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali.

The photos sparked mass protests across Pakistan and spurred criticism of Islamabad's ties with Washington.

Members of Khan's family accused Pakistan's intelligence service of involvement in his disappearance, but authorities denied it. No one has claimed responsibility.

On the Net:

Amnesty report: http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa330352006