NEW YORK, May 24: The Human Rights Watch charged on Monday that US FBI agents operating in Pakistan repeatedly interrogated and threatened two US citizens of Pakistani origin who were unlawfully detained and subjected to torture by the Pakistani security services.

In a report released on Tuesday, the HRW gave details of incarceration, interrogation and torture of brothers Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal who were abducted from their home in Karachi on Aug 13 last year. They were released on April 22 without having been charged.

The HRW alleged that ‘during eight months of illegal detention, Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal were routinely tortured by Pakistani authorities to extract confessions of involvement in terrorist activities. During this period, FBI agents questioned the brothers on at least six occasions. The FBI agents did not intervene to end the torture, insist that the Pakistani government comply with a court order to produce the men in court, or provide consular facilities normally offered to detained US citizens. Instead, they threatened the men with being sent to the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in terrorism’.

Human Rights Watch’s information is based mostly on interviews with the two brothers since their release. The New York-based watchdog called on the Bush administration to provide full information on its role in the Afzal case. Specifically, it said that ‘the US must clarify whether the Afzal brothers were held in Pakistani custody at the request of the United States, and state the policy of the US government when it knows or has reason to know that persons being questioned abroad are being seriously mistreated by their captors’.

“The war on terror cannot be won by resorting to illegal detentions and torture,” said Adams. “It is time for the US to decide whether it will continue to be complicit in criminal activity in its fight against terrorism, or whether the rule of law will prevail.”

It noted that the Convention against Torture, to which the United States is a party, prohibits ‘an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture’.