Detainees Quietly Released from Pakistan’s Secret Detention System
Pakistan has quietly freed nearly 100 terrorism suspects, apparently to avoid embarrassing revelations about the country’s secret detention system, the New York Times reports.
In at least two instances, detainees were handed over to U.S. authorities without formal extradition. In another, a detainee suspected in the death of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was “dumped on a garbage heap, so thin and ill he died 20 days later,” the newspaper says.
Nearly 500 Pakistanis are missing and thought to be held by the country’s intelligence agencies, which are cooperating with the United States in the terrorism fight, the Times report says. Pakistani lawyer Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui has represented some of the men.
“They are releasing them because these cases are being made public,” he told the Times. “They want to avoid the publicity.”
