Bounty hunters 'sell suspects to US'

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Bounty hunters 'sell suspects to US' - Irish Independent

Bounty hunters 'sell suspects to US'

Friday September 29th 2006


Hundreds in custody in Pakistan have disappeared and children tortured, says Amnesty

HUNDREDS of suspects arrested in Pakistan as part of the 'war on terror' have disappeared after being taken into custody, according to Amnesty International.

And many of the suspects are tortured and sold into US custody by bounty hunters, claims a report by the human rights group.

It is alleged some of those tortured include children, and suspects are routinely transferred illegally to Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, as well as other secret locations around the world. The organisation says US operatives are involved in some of the arrests.

Amnesty is calling on Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to reveal the fate of the "disappeared" and calls for an end to "arbitrary detention."

It is also calling on the President, who is on a visit to Britain, to publish a list of detention centres in Pakistan and register all those held on suspicion of terror offences. He is expected to face demonstrations at Oxford University today by supporters of a man facing execution in Pakistan.

Supporters of Mirza Tahir Hussain, a joint UK-Pakistan national facing execution after being convicted of murdering a taxi driver in 1989, say he was denied a fair trial. He is to be executed in the next few days.

The report claims the exact number of those arrested is unknown, but is in the hundreds. It says suspects are sold to the US for up to $5,000 and the majority of Guantanamo Bay prisoners were sold into US custody. Although cash inducements are not illegal, the report states that "the routine practice of offering large rewards for unidentified terror suspects has facilitated arbitrary arrests, detention and enforced disappearance."

It adds: "In Pakistan, torture and ill-treatment are endemic, arbitrary and unlawful arrest and detention are a growing problem, extrajudicial executions of criminal suspects are frequent, well over 7,000 people are on death row and there has recently been a wave of executions."

The organisation claims many of those arrested in Pakistan are held without sufficient evidence and many are held solely based on allegations by those who will gain financially from their arrest.

It raises the case of Mohammed al-Gharani, a Chadian national born in Saudi Arabia who was 14 when he was arrested in 2001. He said he was hung by his wrists in a Karachi prison and regularly beaten with a metal rod before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay where he is now held.

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty UK, said: "Hundreds of people have been subject to illegal detention after arbitrary arrests by secret intelligence forces."

"In many cases there is evidence of the direct involvement of US operatives (CIA and FBI) in Pakistan's wave of 'disappearances.'