Pakistan to help as the US's jailer

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF29Df01.html

Pakistan to help as the US's jailer
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - With the George W Bush administration under pressure to close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pakistan is readying to step in to help its ally in the "war on the terror".

Both US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have suggested that President Bush transfer Guantanamo's detainees to the United States, saying the facility is undercutting US foreign-policy efforts. Should Bush not do so, it is likely that the joint military prison and interrogation camp will be closed by the Democrat-controlled Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Justice Department oppose having Guantanamo prisoners moved to the US.

The prison holds people suspected by the US of being al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives, as well as those no longer considered suspects who are being held pending relocation.

The camp has drawn strong criticism both from within the US military and worldwide for its extrajudicial detention of captives and acknowledgment that the interrogation rules there opened the possibility that captives were being tortured. To date, the Pentagon has only held military commissions for three al-Qaeda members, out of the 375 or so detainees currently at Guantanamo. Several hundred have been released over the past few years.

Asia Times Online has learned that the Bush administration is considering a plan under which inmates would be returned to special facilities in their countries of origin, where they would be treated on a case-by-case basis. There are an estimated 65 or so Pakistanis in Guantanamo, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

These special jails would be administered jointly by American and local security staff. At the same time, the new jails in allied countries would also house new suspects netted in the "war on terror".

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