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Four Pakistanis at Guantanamo Bay face trial - daily

IRNA

Islamabad, Nov 25, IRNA - The American authorities are believed to 
have decided to try four Pakistani prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison 
camp in special military courts, a local daily reported Tuesday. 
Dawn said in its Tuesday issue Pakistan officials had told the US 
authorities that it would be difficult for them to defend Pakistani 
prisoners in a special military court. 
Pakistani officials, the daily added, requested the United States 
to allow them to try the prisoners in a civil court in Pakistan. 
Pakistan Embassy in Washington estimates that so far about 20 
Pakistani prisoners had been freed from Camp X-Ray while more than 50 
were still there. 
A group of US newsmen who visited the Camp X-Ray last week, said 
that so far there had been 31 suicide attempts at the camp. "The 
attempts were made by 21 prisoners, some of whom tried to kill 
themselves more than once," the paper said quoting an American 
journalist. 
The newspaper said that some of British prisoners were of 
Pakistani origin. These include Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg. 
On Friday, the US freed five more Pakistani prisoners from its 
notorious prison in Guntanamo and flew them to Islamabad in a special 
plane. 
The freed prisoners were taken into custody by the Pakistani 
authorities for questioning. 
The five returned to Pakistan after spending nearly two years as 
prisoners of the US military at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. 
Most of the detained Pakistani nationals were members of the 
country`s hardline Islamic groups that were sympathetic to 
Afghanistan`s former Taliban militia regime. 
When the Taliban regime fell, several hundred such Pakistanis were
taken prisoners by different Afghan authorities. 
The American authorities later took away more than 50 Pakistani 
prisoners, along with hundreds of others, to their X-Ray detention 
camp. 
American officials transferred them to the high-security prison in
an effort to glean information about their suspected links with the 
Taliban and al-Qaida. 
Mohammed Sanghir, who was released last November after 10 months, 
is demanding $10.4m in compensation for alleged mental torture. He 
says he was caged in a small cell and kept in solitary confinement for
days at a time. 
MHA/TSH/211 
End