Two South African men being held in Pakistan have apparently told investigators that they received "basic al-Qaeda training", the Johannesburg-based ThisDay newspaper reported yesterday. The newspaper said that Fordsburg doctor Feroz Ganchi and Laudium student Zubair Ismail had both admitted they were recruited in South Africa and had travelled to Pakistan for training.
The pair have been detained under Pakistani military law, under which suspects can be held without charge for up to 24 months. Ganchi appears not to have told his wife, Safiya, about the training. She told the Mail &Guardian recently that they were "extremely patriotic people who fully support the government of our country". Ganchi first learned of her husband's arrest from a newspaper report on July 25. "The article did not mention Feroz but I knew it must be him," she said in August.
| "... because he's such a patriot." |
Ganchi told the M&G Online yesterday that she was "very disturbed" by the new report. "After four weeks of interrogation I think all these confessions are false. By now they are going to say anything." ThisDay said that apart from the basic training they received at a safe house in Gujrat in July, the men apparently told investigators that they had planned to travel to an al-Qaeda camp at Shakai for more intensive training. Asif Shahzad, crime reporter for a Pakistani daily, The Dawn, who has followed the arrests closely, said last week that the interrogation of Ganchi and Ismail was being driven by the US, with Pakistani intelligence only assisting. Shahzad said that according to local intelligence sources the CIA was responsible for identifying the 13 al-Qaeda suspects arrested in Gujrat, including Ganchi, 33, and Ismail, 20. The heavy crackdown on al-Qaeda in Pakistan in recent months could not have been conducted by the Pakistanis alone, he added. Agents from South Africa's National Intelligence Agency (NIA) were apparently given access to the men last week. NIA director Vusi Mavimbela told ThisDay it was not true that maps and documents allegedly found in the men's possession showed that they had intended to attack key installations in South Africa. |