This is a long held tradition for ISI and MI, but now local police and citizens are also getting in on the lucrative trade.
Amnesty: Pakistan kidnaps terror suspects
POSTED: 5:07 a.m. EDT, September 29, 2006
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) – The road to the Guantanamo Bay detention center begins in Pakistan, according to a report by rights group Amnesty International.
The report details how Pakistan has abducted hundreds of people and detained them illegally for the sake of cooperating with the U.S.-led “war on terror.”
Pakistan routinely abducts so-called “terror suspects” and transfers them to Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, north of Kabul, or secret U.S. detention centers elsewhere, said Claudio Cordone, senior director of research at Amnesty International.
The report also details how bounty hunters – including police officers and local citizens – have captured individuals of different nationalities, often apparently at random, and then sold them into U.S. custody.
More than 85 percent of Guantanamo detainees who were arrested by the Afghan Northern Alliance in Pakistan were taken initially when each “terrorist” handed to the United States fetched a reward of up to $5,000, the report alleges.
“The road to Guantanamo very literally starts in Pakistan,” Cordone said.
In a statement, Amnesty said the increase of “enforced disappearances” and holding of suspects incommunicado were almost unheard of before 2003 and puts detainees at “risk of torture and unlawful transfer to third countries.”
Pakistani government officials did not immediately comment on the newly released report, titled “Human Rights Ignored in the War on Terror.”
On Wednesday, President Bush, Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met over a White House dinner and discussed topics involving the war on terror, a senior administration official said.
