Pakistan Accused of Illegal Detentions

Angelika Pathak, a London-based researcher for the Amnesty International speaks to media during the launching ceremony of Human Rights ignored in the War on Terror report in Islamabad, Pakistan on Friday, Sept. 29, 2006. Pakistani authorities have abducted hundreds of people, accused them of terrorist ties and held them in secret locations or handed them over to U.S. authorities for American-offered rewards, Amnesty International claimed in a report issued Friday. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed) (Anjum Naveed - AP)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan illegally detained innocent people on suspicion of terrorism, secretly imprisoned them, and transferred them to U.S. custody for money, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said Friday.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in a memoir released days ago, wrote that his government has earned bounties totaling "millions of dollars" from the transfer of terror suspects to U.S. authorities.

Hundreds of Pakistanis and foreigners were rounded up in Pakistan on suspicion of links to terrorism since the U.S.-led war on terror started after the Sept. 11 attacks, Amnesty said in a report, titled "Human Rights Ignored in the War on Terror."

"The war on terror has added a new layer of human rights violations to the existing patterns of abuses (in Pakistan)," said Angelika Pathak, an Amnesty researcher who helped prepare the report.

"The phenomenon of enforced disappearance was virtually unknown before the war on terror," Pathak said.

Amnesty suggested the lure of U.S. government rewards led in many cases to the illegal arrests of people, including women and children, in Pakistan.

Pakistan also has its own bounty program that provides money for the capture of suspected terrorists, which the Amnesty report did not take into consideration.

"Bounty hunters _ including police officers and local people _ have captured individuals of different nationalities, often apparently at random, and sold them into U.S. custody," said Claudio Cordone, senior director of research at Amnesty International.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam rejected the report's allegations that Pakistan illegally detained people in exchange for money.

"Whenever we arrest any foreign terror suspect, we try to send him back to the country he belongs," she told The Associated Press. "In most of the cases, such suspects are not accepted by their own government."

"Naturally, we cannot keep them here," she said.

Amnesty's allegations, largely based on interviews with former detainees, came days after Musharraf revealed in his memoir that Pakistan had captured 689 al-Qaida terror suspects and turned over 369 to Washington.