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Disappeared { August 8 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
>http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0808-02.htm>http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0808-02.htm
>
>Published on Thursday, August 8, 2002 in the lndependent/UK
>Return to Afghanistan:
>Families of the Disappeared Demand Answers
>by Robert Fisk
>
>
>They came for Hussain Abdul Qadir on 25 May. According to his wife, there
>were three American agents from the FBI and 25 men from the local
>Pakistani CID. The Palestinian family had lived in the Pakistani city of
>Peshawar for years and had even applied for naturalization.
>
>But this was not a friendly visit to their home in Hayatabad Street. "They
>broke our main gate and came into the house without any respect," Mrs
>Abdul Qadir was to report later to the director of human rights at
>Pakistan's Ministry of Law and Justice in Islamabad.
>
>"They blindfolded my husband and tied his hands behind his back. They
>searched everything in 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," she said.
>
>Where, Mrs Abdul Qadir asked Ahsan Akhtar, the director of human rights,
>was her husband? The Independent has now learnt exactly where he is he
>is a prisoner in a cage on the huge American air base at Bagram in
>Afghanistan. He was kidnapped there appears to be no other word for it
>by the Americans and simply flown over the international frontier from
>Pakistan. His "crime" is unknown. He has no lawyers to defend him. In the
>vacuum of the US "war on terror", Mr Abdul Qadir 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" (sic) 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 dated 29 June and the Red Cross has 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 rumors
>that Afghan interrogators are allowed to beat prisoners in the presence of
>CIA men or if, or when, they intend to release their captives. Indeed,
>the Americans will not even confirm that prisoners have been seized in
>Pakistan and taken across the Afghan border.
>
>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 Mr 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, according to his wife. "I don't have any
>support and I am not able to go anywhere without my husband," she has told
>Mr Akhtar in Islamabad. Both Mr Hariri and Dr Fathi are believed to be
>held at Bagram, which is now the main American interrogation center in
>Afghanistan. "From there," one humanitarian worker told The Independent,
>"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."
>
>Many Arabs moved to Peshawar during the war against the Russians in
>Afghanistan and remained there as doctors or aid workers. The Abdul
>Qadirs, for example, asked for naturalization. in January 1993 Mr Abdul
>Qadir holds a Jordanian passport long before Osama bin Laden returned to
>Afghanistan and founded his al-Qa'ida movement.
>
>"I don't know why all this happened to us because we are Muslims and
>Arabs," Mrs Abdul Qadir 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 civilized manner."
>
>* At least 15 people have been killed in a shoot-out between Afghan police
>and what witnesses said was a group of Arabs and Pakistanis south of Kabul
>yesterday. Omar Samad, a foreign ministry spokesman described the gang as
>"determined and suicidal".
>
>© 2002 lndependent Digital (UK) Ltd
>
>
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