December 17, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 12, 1423

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KOHAT, Dec 16: The two brothers accused of providing shelter to 42 Chechen nationals, who had killed 10 armymen in an encounter in Wana last June, have been “cleared” of all the charges by the two joint investigation teams (JIT) in Peshawar and Wana, a highly placed source confided to Dawn on Monday.

The two brothers — Abdul Khaliq Sarki Khel and Zaman Khan Sarki Khel — after their conditional surrender to the authorities had admitted that they provided shelter to three groups of Chechens fighters in their houses between November 2001 and June 2002. They appeared before a JIT in Wana, headquarters of the South Waziristan Agency bordering Paktia province of Afghanistan, after two months of hiding where they were interrogated by senior civil and military officials from the Inter-Services Intelligence, Military Intelligence and Intelligence Bureau.

Qari Attaullah, the third accused, has been declared “black” by the JIT which interrogated the two brothers. The authorities had recovered maps and other belongings of the Al Qaeda members from his house in the Azam Warsak town of the tribal territory in July last, informed a senior intelligence officer, Khurshid Khan who is supervising the investigations. Both the brothers have not been released so far.

Earlier, the military and tribal authorities had demolished the houses of the two brothers and confiscated their property after imposing a fine of Rs2 million. The action was taken in the light of preliminary investigations after both confessed to have helped Al Qaeda.

In a report sent to the provincial home department the intelligence agencies had stated that all the 42 foreign nationals who had killed 10 armymen were Chechens and there were no Arabs involved in the incident.

They also submitted that the accused who fled the scene had most probably escaped to other parts of the country or some of their members might be hiding in the inaccessible mountains of the border area.

On June 26 a military team led by FBI conducted an operation in the Azam Warsak area to arrest Al Qaeda members. During the encounter ten armymen including a major and a captain were killed by the fighters.

A chieftain who handed over the accused to the administration told Dawn that the government had promised that they would not be handed over to the US in any case.