ISLAMABAD, Jan 14: Australian embassy officials on Tuesday had yet to be granted access to an Australian man held for 10 days by Pakistani authorities for suspected Al Qaeda links.

“We’ve submitted a request for consular access. We’re still waiting for Pakistani authorities to get back to us,” an official at the Australian High Commission in Islamabad told AFP.

Melbourne-based Jack Thomas, a Muslim convert who changed his name to Jihad Thomas, was detained by Pakistani intelligence agents on Jan 4 after boarding a plane in Karachi.

A senior Karachi security official said Thomas was being held by Pakistan’s military intelligence wing in Karachi.

The 29-year-old former taxi driver had been sought by Pakistani and Australian intelligence agencies for more than a year.

Australian officials said he had travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001 and was believed to have spent time at an Al Qaeda training camp.

Thomas has not yet been charged but is being held under a Pakistani security law, the High Commission official said.

“We won’t know what applies until we get consular access,” the Australian official said.

An official from the Pakistan police force’s Anti-Terrorism Wing said foreigners would only be charged in Pakistan if they were found to be involved in terror attacks here.

“I don’t know the details of the Australian arrested here, but I believe there is no case against him as far as terrorism is concerned,” he told AFP.

Thomas is the second Australian Al Qaeda suspect to have been captured in Pakistan. Sydney resident Mamdouh Habib was detained in Pakistan in October 2001 and sent to Egypt then Afghanistan before winding up in the United States detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Pakistan has captured more than 422 Al Qaeda suspects in its cities and rugged western border regions since the United States-led coalition launched its military campaign in October 2001 to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives harbouring in Afghanistan.

Most of them have been handed over to United States custody.