Monday, May 23, 2005

Gitmo detainees were asked about the ISI

Gitmo detainees quizzed about ISI networks

ARACHI: Three Pakistani prisoners who returned from Guantanamo Bay in September last year recently told a joint interrogation team (JIT) of several intelligence agencies that the Americans were curious about the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and wanted information on the agency’s networks in Afghanistan and Iran. They also corroborated reports that US interrogators desecrated the Quran.

According to documents obtained by Daily Times, Military Intelligence (MI), Intelligence Bureau (IB), ISI, Special Investigation Group (SIG) and Sindh Police personnel conducted the joint interrogation of Abid Raza (s/o Mohammad Hussain), Mohammad Anwar (s/o Mohammad Yameen) and Mohammad Ilyas in Karachi, Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas prisons from April 18 to May 10 this year.

The three, along with a dozen others, had arrived from Guantanamo Bay in September last year. After detaining them at Adyala Jail in Rawalpindi for about eight months, the authorities took them to prisons in Sindh in early April. The three prisoners, who had been taken to the Guantanamo detention facility from Afghanistan in January 2002, said the Americans interrogated them about Al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISI.

“But most of their questions were about the ISI. They wanted to know how many of those detained in Guantanamo had been associated with the ISI. They would to ask things like what were the networks of the ISI in Afghanistan and Iran, how the agency worked in those countries and who were working for the ISI in Afghanistan and Iran,” the Guantanamo returnees told the JIT.