WASHINGTON, Jan 30: Ejaz Haider, the news editor and a columnist of The Friday Times, was arrested by US officials for failing to register with the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS). He spent 12 hours in a lock-up and was released only after Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri spoke with senior officials here.

Mr Haider is a visiting research scholar at the Brookings Institution, one of the Washington’s most prominent think-tanks.

Asked to comment on Haider’s detention, head of the Brookings South Asia programme, Stephen P. Cohen, said: “I never thought I’d see this in my own country: people grabbed on the street and taken away.”

A Justice Department spokesman, Jorge Martinez, said that Haider had missed a deadline to check in at the INS centre concerned. Mr Haider, however, said that officials both at the State Department and INS had told him he could ignore the requirement to check back within 40 days of registering upon arrival at Dulles International Airport.

“They probably had been keeping me under surveillance for some time,” Mr Haider said.

“They asked me if my name was Ejaz Haider. I said ‘yes’. They showed me their IDs, and just asked me why I hadn’t gone in for some interview.”

Talking to Dawn, Mr Kasuri said he discussed Haider’s case with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft when he met the American official at his office to discuss the INS registration programme.

“I told him that it is this sort of thing that is going to happen if INS officials are not checked.”

Although Haider is a known campaigner against religious extremists, Martinez said he might have been arrested after failing to register because he came from a country where “Al Qaida is active”.

Mr Martinez said: “A willful violation of the rules, such as failing to register, is a criminal offence.” The columnist, however, said he failed to register because he was told by US officials he did not have to register, but Martinez said INS officials did not know whether he was telling the truth.

He said that a disciplinary action could be taken against the INS officials if it was found that they violated a law or committed a violation of Haider’s rights. Mr Haider said that INS officials did not even allow him to take his wallet with him.