ISLAMABAD, 30 September 2006 — Human rights watchdog Amnesty International in its latest report accused Pakistan of violating human rights and detaining hundreds of people on half-baked or flimsy evidence.

The report said that during the past five years many people went missing in Pakistan and later ended up in Guantanamo Bay.

Amnesty International’s current report focuses on arbitrary arrests, nondisclosure of the whereabouts of suspects and their nonproduction in courts thus denying them the right to defense. It said Islamabad has systematically abused the rights of hundreds of locals and foreigners while cooperating with the US in the war on terror. “As the practice of enforced disappearances has spread, people have been arrested and held incommunicado in secret locations with their detention officially denied. They are at risk of torture and unlawful transfer to third countries,” AI said in its report titled “Pakistan: Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror.’”

“Hundreds of people have been picked up, many have been sold to the US as ‘terrorists’ simply on the word of their captor, and hundreds have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Bagram air base or secret detention centers run by the US,” the report said.

“Hundreds of terror suspects have disappeared after being taken into custody, many by Pakistan’s intelligence services,” said the report. “A large number of war on terror detainees have been literally sold into US hands by bounty hunters who have received cash payments in return, typically $5,000,” it added.

Moazzam Begg, who was seized from his home in Islamabad in early 2003, gave a personal account of disappearing yesterday.

“I received a knock on my door. I was literally kidnapped from my home,” he told BBC radio, adding that his wife was lied to when she took legal proceedings seeking to find his whereabouts. “They denied all knowledge that I was in their custody,” he said, adding that “charges were a luxury that we could not get.” Angelika Pathak, South Asia researcher at Amnesty, said the phenomenon of disappearances only started after 9/11.

“Enforced disappearances were almost unheard of in Pakistan before the start of the US-led ‘war on terror’ — now they are a growing phenomenon, spreading beyond terror suspects to Baloch and Sindhi nationalists and journalists,” she said.

New Ambassador to India

Pakistan yesterday announced the appointment of a new ambassador to neighboring India. Current Pakistani high commissioner to Canada, Shahid Malik, will replace Aziz Ahmed Khan, a Foreign Ministry statement said. No reason was given for the change. Malik has previously served as a diplomat in India, Japan, the United States and Italy, the statement said.

Plane Crashes in Lahore

A light aircraft crashed on landing in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore yesterday, killing its pilot and the sole passenger, police said.

The two-seater plane crashed at the government-owned Walton airport, which is used by flying clubs for flight training, said Mohammed Ijaz Shafi, an area police chief. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. Police are investigating the mishap.