WASHINGTON, Jan 18: The US authorities had detained 1,256 Pakistanis since Sept 11, 2001, when the current campaign against illegal immigrants began, a Pakistani diplomat said on Saturday.

About 1,000 of these detainees had already been deported to Pakistan while the rest were still in detention, he said.

Pakistan’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, Mohammad Sadiq, told Dawn that so far only six Pakistanis had been detained during the registration.

Pakistanis living in the United States are required to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, along with their photographs and fingerprints, from Jan 13 to Feb. 21.

Those detained during registration include Khurram Ali, a 22-year old student of Hunter College, New York, who was detained last week apparently for failing to pay his tuition. But his friends say he has been detained because he was studying aeronautics, a subject American authorities do not want Muslims to learn. Some of the hijackers who caused the Sept 11, 2001, tragedy, were training here as pilots.