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Afghan Officials Detain American Boy, U.S. Says
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Ismail Jahangir, a spokesman for the governor of Ghazni province in Afghanistan, said Monday that the Afghan Interior Ministry took the boy into custody the same day Siddiqui was arrested. Jahangir said the governor's office was not aware of what happened to the boy after he was handed over to the Interior Ministry.
An Interior Ministry official reached by phone in Kabul said Ahmed was held by the ministry for a day, then taken into custody by the Afghan National Security Directorate, an intelligence agency.
"We kept the boy for 24 hours because we do not have a right to hold him longer than that," an Interior Ministry official said. "We sent him to the National Security Directorate, and I don't know what happened to the boy after that."
U.S. agents said the boy initially told them he was an orphan, according to the prosecutors' letter to Siddiqui's family.
The Afghan National Security Directorate has worked closely with CIA officials since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. The agency has acted as the lead liaison in dozens of high-level detainee cases involving Afghan prisoners, including investigations involving detainees recently returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the U.S.-run prison at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's government, meanwhile, has made aggressive public appeals on Siddiqui's behalf. Earlier this month, the country's parliament passed a resolution calling for her immediate repatriation to Pakistan. Late last week, an official with Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government plans to send a delegation to Washington to look into her case.
Rondeaux reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
