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PESHAWAR, Feb 17: Five workers of a Kuwaiti-funded relief agency, whose detention was challenged in Peshawar High Court (PHC), have been handed over to the US a few months ago, sources said.
These five Arabs of the Afghan Support Committee were picked up from Peshawar by the CID and other state agencies on May 27, 2002, on the charge of having links with Al Qaeda.
An official of an Arab NGO confided to Dawn here on Monday that families of the five detainees— Hassan Khalil, Hamad Ali, Mohammad Al Ghazali, Al Rasheed and Jalib Mohammad— had received their letters from Guantanamo Bay, a notorious detention centre where the US authorities are interrogating over 443 Al Qaeda suspects and senior Taliban officials.
HE SAID: “These five relief workers have been shifted to Camp X-Ray and their family members received postcards and letters through the International Committee of Red Crescent (ICRC).”
A two-member PHC bench is dealing with petitions, filed by some relatives of the workers, for the last nine months. The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has yet to provide information regarding the whereabouts of the detainees.
Surprisingly, the deputy-attorney general representing the federal government informed the court that he did not know about the arrests, because his predecessor was tackling the case. The interior ministry had already expressed its ignorance about the arrests.
On the last hearing of Jan 29, the bench, comprising Justice Tallat Qayyum Qureshi and Justice Qazi Ahsanullah Qureshi, once again issued directives to the ISI director-general to file comments in reply to those petitions.
Islamabad reportedly has so far handed over some 443 suspects to US authorities in connection with their alleged links with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations, without fulfilling legal requirements.
Amnesty International, a human rights watchdog, in its report on the removal of the suspected Al Qaeda activists from Pakistan to Guantanamo Bay had also voiced concern on the issue.
The world body believes that Islamabad had violated its own Extradition Act 1975, while handing over the prisoners to the US government, and that according to the law of the land the accused should be produced before a court.
