'I Will Go to Do Jihad Again and Again'

Ali nodded, and the man quickly led him to another bus, this one far more dilapidated. They rode for an hour to a small town, then alighted and began a steep hike up into the hills, following no discernable path. For more than four hours they trekked in silence under a cool canopy of trees, taller than any Ali had ever seen.

Finally they reached a small camp of five white tents, where about 20 men were preparing to perform afternoon prayers. Ali was introduced to a soft-spoken Pakistani instructor who never gave his name, though Ali said he overheard others refer to him as Maksud.

Maksud never gave the name of the group that was training him, Ali said. However, the hills around Mansehra overlook Pakistan's border with Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan province that is split between Pakistan and India.

The area has long been a training ground for Kashmiri guerrillas, unofficially supported by Pakistan. In recent years, several Kashmiri groups have joined forces with al Qaeda or the Taliban to attack Western targets, but critics charge that the Pakistani military remains reluctant to defang them.

Every day, Ali said, the trainees awoke before dawn and did sprinting exercises for 20 minutes. They spent several hours learning how to assemble, aim and fire weapons, from Kalashnikov rifles to rocket-propelled grenade launchers, although Ali said there was only one rocket, so the trainees never actually fired it.

Despite the loud bangs emanating from the camp, Ali said, Maksud took pains to conceal it and warned the trainees not to wander too far away.

Shortly after Ali returned to Peshawar, he said, Zubair arrived and announced they would drive into Afghanistan the next morning. Ali said Zubair never told him whom they would be joining, but an Afghan intelligence investigator said Ali had confessed under interrogation that Zubair was working for a senior Taliban commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Ali said Afghan border guards waved them into Konar, assuming they were Afghan. But some miles later, police stopped their taxi. When they discovered Ali did not have identity papers, they arrested him.

Ali complained that the Konar police kept him tied up for several days and threatened to hurt him. But he said that he was never beaten and added he had been pleasantly surprised by the extent to which Afghans appeared to be in charge of their country.

Still, the Pakistani prisoner remained skeptical and defiant. The interview over, Ali rose from his chair in the investigator's office and began to shuffle out of the room. Suddenly, he stopped and popped his head back through the door.

"So," he demanded, "when are you taking me to Guantanamo?"