KABUL - They came for Hussain Abdul Qadir on May 25 - three United States agents from the FBI and 25 men from the local Pakistani CID, says his wife.
The Palestinian family had lived in the Pakistani city of Peshawar for years, long before the return of Osama bin Laden, and had even applied for naturalisation. But this was not a friendly visit.
"They broke our main gate and came into the house without any respect," Abdul Qadir's wife was to report later to the Director of Human Rights at the Pakistani Ministry of Law and Justice in Islamabad.
"They blindfolded my husband and tied his hands behind his back. They searched the house - they took our computer, mobile phone and even our land-line phone.
"They took video and audio cassettes. They took all our important documents - our passports and other certificates and they took our money, too."
Where, she asked Ahsan Akhtar, the director of human rights, was her husband?
He is a prisoner in a cage on the huge US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan. His "crime" is unknown. He has no lawyers to defend him. In the vacuum of the US "war on terror", he has become a non-person.
His wife has now received a single sheet of paper from the Red Cross which gives no geographical location for the prisoner but lists his nationality as "Palastainian" and the following message in poorly written Arabic: "To the family and children in Peshawar. I am well and need, first and foremost, God's mercy and then your prayers. Take care of your faith and be kind to the little ones. Could you send me my reading glasses? Your father: Hussain Abdul Qadir."
The sheet of paper is date-stamped June 29 and the Red Cross have confirmed that the prisoner - ICRC number AB7 001486-01 - was interviewed in Bagram.
Needless to say, the Americans will give no information about their prisoners or the reasons for their detention. They will not say whether their interrogators are Afghan or American - there are increasing rumours that Afghan interrogators are allowed to beat prisoners in the presence of CIA men - or if, or when, they intend to release their captives.
They will not even confirm that prisoners have been seized in Pakistan and taken to Afghanistan.
Fatima Youssef has also complained to the Pakistani authorities that her Syrian husband, Manhal al-Hariri - a school director working for the Saudi Red Crescent Society - was seized on the same night as Abdul Qadir from their home in Peshawar, again by three Americans and a group of Pakistani CID men. "I have the right to ask where my husband is and to know where they have taken him," she has written to the Pakistani authorities.
"I have the right to ask for an appeal to release him now, after an interrogation. I have the right to ask for the return of the things which they took from my house."
An Algerian doctor, Bositta Fathi, was also taken that same night by two Americans and Pakistani forces, says his wife.
"I don't have any support and I am not able to go anywhere without my husband."
Both al-Hariri and Fathi are believed to be held at Bagram.
"From there," one humanitarian worker said, "you either get released or packed off to Guantanamo. Who knows what the fate of these people is or what they are supposed to have done? It seems that it's all outside the law."
"I don't know why all this happened to us because we are Muslims and Arabs," Abdul Qadir's wife says. "I want to know about my husband.
"We will leave Pakistan if the Government wants us to leave. We will do anything the Government wants but in a human and civilised manner."
- INDEPENDENT
Story archives:
Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Secret prisoners kept in cages at US airbase
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
