PESHAWAR, May 30: An imposter posing himself as a prisoner released from Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, has been deceiving people by narrating false stories of his imprisonment.

The person was last seen at Chakdara (Malakand Agency) four days ago when he visited the local press club where newsmen collected donations for him after hearing the awful tale of his imprisonment at Guantanamo, Israel, UK and Afghanistan.

The man, whose identity is not yet known, poses himself as Muhammad Ishaq, a boy belonging to Panjgoor (Balochistan), who at present is imprisoned at Camp X-Ray.

Noor Ahmad, an uncle of Muhammad Ishaq, told Dawn that the family had been searching for the impostor after the publication of some news items about him.

He said that initially after the publication of a news item in a small-time newspaper, they believed that Ishaq might have been released from Guantanamo, but later on they received a letter from him and they came to know that an imposter had been using his name to mint money from ignorant citizens.

According to the family members, Ishaq was a minor boy when he was arrested in Afghanistan during the US war on terror and shifted to Guantanamo. Father of Ishaq, Abdul Kareem, is a vet and a poor person. Like other children of the area, Chitkan village (Panjgoor), Ishaq was sent to a famous madressah of Washbood area for religious education.

When he was about 15, he disappeared from the madressah. Later on, his uncle claimed, they came to know that he was taken to the occupied Kashmir by a militant organisation to fight against Indian forces. And two years ago, he was traced in Kabul and finally reported to be at Camp X-Ray.

His family received about 17 letters from him during this period. However, they believed that he might not be receiving their reply as in every letter he had been complaining of not receiving their letters.

“Ishaq was neither a top Taliban leader nor he got anything to do with Al-Qaeda,” he claimed.

On May 4, a story appeared in a Muzzarabad-based newspaper Al-Islam about the return of Ishaq from Afghanistan. But when his family members visited the bureau office of the paper in Rawalpindi, they came to know about the activities of the impostor.

Just four days ago, stories appeared in almost all the leading newspapers about the visit of Ishaq to the Chakdara Press Club. He had told the newsmen there that he was shifted to Israel from Camp X-Ray where he was severely tortured, along with other Pakistani prisoners.

A correspondent told Dawn from Chakdara that they had collected about Rs2,000 for the said person so that he could travel to Balochistan to join his family. “The man was in very bad shape and his health was also not well, due to which we considered that his story might be correct,” he said.