Village awaits Pakistani freed from Guantanamo

Village Pattan in the remote Kohistan district of NWFP is preparing for the return of their prodigal – Mohammed Sagheer, 60, who was released along with three Afghan nationals by U.S. authorities from its Guantanamo Bay interrogation camp yesterday.

The father of 16 children – 10 sons and six daughters – Sagheer, who owns a saw mill alongside his small mud house in Kaser Chari locality of Pattan, near Swabi is expected in his home town shortly.

Sagheer was flown back to Pakistan late on Sunday, Brigadier Javed Cheema, head of the Interior Ministry's National Crises Management Cell confirmed. "He is the first of a total of 58 Pakistani prisoners and the release of five more will take place shortly," Cheema said.

Islamabad officials were pressing Washington to release the majority of the Pakistanis held there as they had no links to Al Qaida, Cheema added.

The U.S. military is holding almost 600 people at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, most of them suspected Al Qaida militants detained in Afghanistan. Washington regards the captives, from about 40 countries, as unlawful combatants who can be held without trial for as long as it is engaged in a war on terrorism.

"We are waiting for his arrival, we will be happy to see him alive again. Relatives and friends have been visiting us since morning, happy that Sagheer is soon to be reunited with us," said Mohammed Jan, a cousin and brother-in-law of the freed man, who according to his relatives spent more than a year at Camp X-Ray in Cuba.

An elder of the village Malik Aurang Zeb told Gulf News that the family members of Sagheer had not heard from him until he sent the first of several letters from Cuba three months ago to inform them that he was a captive of U.S. forces.

"He left home for Tabligh. We have no idea how, when and where he was arrested by the U.S. forces and taken to Cuba," said Mohammed Jan. Sagheer said he was interrogated at Camp X-Ray on suspicion of being an Al Qaida member or having links with the alleged terrorist organisation led by Osama bin Laden.

"We have not heard about Osama bin Laden before the attack on Afghanistan. Sagheer is a religious man and might have landed in Afghanistan to help the Taliban," a relative confided.

However, his family members and village elders insist that Sagheer was not a militant at all and had no links with any of the religious groups believing in militancy.

"Sagheer sought forgiveness of the family members and asked them to pray for his release because he is innocent," said Zeb, who translated the letter to Sagheer's sons and other family members sent from Guantanamo.

It has been learnt that Sagheer will be released by Pakistani authorities and sent home after debriefing him by a number of secret agencies. The sources said that Sagheer will not be jailed or detained for long time because the Americans have already cleared him of the charges.

However, people in Pattan believe that Sagheer had joined thousands of other tribesmen, who were sent to Afghanistan at the peak of the U.S. bombing to fight alongside the ousted Taliban forces.

In Mansehra, close relatives of Sagheer said that the labourer went to Afghanistan to fight jihad on the call of religious leaders, specially Sufi Mohammed, chief of the banned Tanzeem Nifaz Shariat-I-Muhammadi Malakand.

Locals said that Sagheer was affiliated with TNSM, which has strong support in Kohistan, Mansehra, Hazara division, where its armed activists blocked the main Karakoram Highway at several points to lodge protest over the relentless bombing by U.S. war planes to punish Taliban for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden, accused of terrorist attack on the destroyed World Trade center on September 11, 2001.

Hundreds of jihadis, sent by Sufi Mohammed to Afghanistan were either killed or arrested by forces loyal to different factions within the Northern Alliance with the backing of U.S. aerial raids.

A number of the arrested pro-Taliban Afghan as well as non-Afghan nationals were handed over to the U.S. forces by their Afghan allies and were flown to Cuba for interrogation about their links with Al Qaida.

AFP adds: The three Afghans arrived at Bagram Air Base, a U.S.-dominated facility north of Kabul, late on Sunday and were handed over to Afghan authorities, Caroline Douilliez of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

"So far there were three detainees coming from Cuba that were given to Afghan authorities with the presence of ICRC at Bagram," Douilliez said. "What we are doing is trying to put these detainees back in touch with their families and we will follow their progress until they are with their families."

Douilliez said she was aware of only one other detainee who had previously been returned from Guantanamo.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan currently on a brief visit to the country, said those released had been cleared of any links with Al Qaida.