ISLAMABAD, March 11: The family members of three persons being detained by the US and Pakistani law-enforcement agencies for their alleged links with Al Qaeda have sought their early release, pleading that they are innocent.

This demand was made by the family members of Saifullah Paracha, an Al-Qaeda suspect in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, and Zain bin Afzal and Kashan Afzal, two brothers allegedly arrested by law-enforcement agencies in Karachi last year.

Speaking at a news conference at the Rawalpindi Press Club camp office here on Friday, they said the US was acting blindly due to its power and was detaining innocent people for allegedly having links with Al Qaeda. Former MNA from Kohat Javed Ibrahim Paracha was also present on the occasion.

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Sara Zain said her husband, Zain bin Afzal, and brother-in-law, Kashan Afzal, both US nationals, were taken away by the personnel of some law-enforcement agencies on the night of August 15 last year, and since then, they had no clue to their whereabouts.

Without showing any court warrants, she said agencies’ personnel entered her house and took away her husband and brother-in-law along with their US passports, driving licences and social security cards, a computer and a licensed pistol.

She said the police were not registering the abduction case, and it was only after the directives of the Sindh High Court that Rizwiya Police Station, Karachi, registered an FIR.

All of her family members, she said, had been facing psychological torture round-the-clock since their dear ones were taken away. She appealed to the government to allow her and other family members to see her husband and brother-in-law and produce them before the court where they could defend themselves against the charges on which they had been detained.

Zahra Paracha, a 12-year-old daughter of Saifullah Paracha, who went missing on July 5 last year after taking a Thai Airways flight TG-502 from Karachi to Bangkok, also spoke on the occasion.

She said except for Federal Religious Affairs Minister Ijazul Haq, no one in the government was even willing to meet her family members and listen to their grievance. She said she had sent many e-mails to US President George W Bush and appealed for mercy because her father had no connections with any terrorist network, but there was no reply.