FBI's secret detention of suspect alarms Pakistan
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Your support makes all the difference.America's hunt for Osama bin Laden, and the extra-judicial methods used by intelligence agents in rounding up his alleged associates, face a new challenge in Pakistan.
It centres on the secret detention of a British-trained orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Amir Aziz. American investigators suspect he provided medical treatment to Bin Laden and al-Qa'ida members in Afghanistan before the attack on the World Trade Centre.
Yesterday a High Court judge in Lahore ordered the Pakistan Interior Ministry to "cause the production" of the doctor in his court next Tuesday, setting the stage for a possible showdown.
Dr Aziz, 46, who used to treat the Pakistan cricket team, was taken away by FBI and Pakistani intelligence agents during a raid on his hospital office in Lahore on 21 October. His relatives have not seen him since. They have also not been told why he was detained or where he is.
The case has generated strong emotions in Lahore in the eastern state of Punjab, which is widely seen as Pakistan's intellectual capital and a stronghold of democratic opposition to General Pervez Musharraf's military rule.
The order by the judge, Tassadaq Hussain Jilani, was the court's second attempt to get the government to produce the doctor in response to a habeas corpus petition from Dr Aziz's elderly mother and a pro-democracy political party, a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League.
Last week the judge – who had earlier passed an injunction barring the doctor's extradition – told the Interior Ministry to produce the doctor before him yesterday. It failed to do so, asking for more time on the basis that it was not sure of Dr Aziz's whereabouts.
Central to the issue is the role of Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI). Its agents, to the annoyance of many Pakistanis, have been working with the FBI in tracking down and detaining suspected Islamist militants. Scores of Pakistanis have spent months being interrogated, without trial or charge, at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – a practice widely seen in Pakistan as a violation of sovereignty.
The doctor's family and lawyers believe the ISI knows where he is being held. They have not been impressed by the Interior Ministry's pleadings that one reason it has been unable to track down Dr Aziz is because the ISI does not come under its remit.
Nor has Judge Jilani. He declared that he was "not satisfied" and warned the government that its citizens, "even those accused of a serious crime", are entitled to the due process of law.
His court "shall see to it" that Dr Aziz is provided with his rights, he told a crowded courtroom. "People owe their allegiance to the state because it promises them security and justice. If people lose faith in state institutions, you can imagine the consequences."
All sides in the case have so far avoided an all-out confrontation, which could stoke up the anger and resentment Pakistan about the so-called war on terror.
Why the Americans are so interested in Dr Aziz remains unclear. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, quoting his unnamed colleagues, said that he operated on Bin Laden in Afghanistan two years ago. If this is true, the Americans are certain to want to discover all they can about this.
Dr Aziz's relatives in Lahore say he went to Afghanistan to do voluntary work at the Kabul Medical Centre. But they said he did so openly. He also travelled to Kosovo to work during the crisis there.
He is a devout Muslim. One of the lawyers fighting his case, Ehsan Wyne, described him as "a religious and philanthropic person, but not a fundamentalist or an extremist".
There were unsourced news reports immediately after his arrest that he was accused of supplying anthrax to Islamist militants. Other accounts were even more vague, suggesting that he might have been involved in assisting al-Qa'ida to develop biological and chemical weapons.
These allegations were dismissed as "absolutely baseless" yesterday by the doctor's brother, Dr Muhammad Ayub, a Lahore cardiologist. He told The Independent that Dr Aziz was a prominent and busy surgeon, who trained in London and Edinburgh in the 1980s.
He was not connected with any political organisation, he said. "He is an orthopaedic surgeon who I think may not even know the chemical formula for water. He is concerned with people's bones."
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