(Xinhua) -- A Pakistani Senate Committee Saturday demanded the immediate closure of the detention center in the Guantanamo Bay as it is in complete violation of the norms of a civilized world.
| Pakistain presume to lecture anyone, anywhere, with the exception of Somalia and Zim, on the norms of civilized behavior? |
The Senate Functional Committee on human rights through a unanimous resolution also called for releasing the six Pakistanis detained there.
| Pakistain in the place where their "human rights" commission can't tell the difference between terrorism and counterterrorism. |
The committee met at the Parliament House under Chairmanship of Senator S.M. Zafar and discussed the issue of detention of a woman, believed to be a Pakistani national, at U.S. Army's Bagram Detention Center in Afghanistan for over four years. The issue was highlighted in the national press on July 7, 2008 after the issue was raised at a press conference by a British journalist who converted to Islam after she was captured and held briefly by the Taliban shortly before the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.
Members of the committee underlined the need for making more coordinated efforts to know the facts whether there was any woman languishing in illegal detention of the U.S. forces at Bagram in Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay. The committee was told that 67 Pakistanis had been freed so far from the Guantanamo Bay prison but six are still there. The committee members directed the ministries of interior, foreign affairs and the human rights division to take up the matter with the intelligence agencies whether they had handed over any women to the U.S. forces for interrogation or not.
The committee observed that the issue was of immense importance, all out efforts should be made not only to get the correct information but also take appropriate steps to get the women, if detained, released. It gave clear-cut directions to the concerned ministries that bureaucratic snags should not mar the issue and priority should be given to the matter. The committee was informed that the interior ministry had approached the ministry of foreign affairs to contact the U.S. authorities in this regard and the diplomatic mission in Kabul to take up the issue of the detained Pakistani woman with authorities in Bagram military base.
Officials of the foreign ministry told the committee that the matter was being pursued vigorously. The committee was informed that the Public Affairs Wing of the U.S. force based at Bagram in Afghanistan had already denied that any woman prisoner was detained in Afghanistan. |