SA 'involved' in war on terror

2006-06-08 08:09

Johannesburg - The South African government is facing accusations that it handed over a Pakistani national and alleged terror suspect to US intelligence agents or their allies.

Lawyer Zahir Omar said that he plans to ask the ministers of home affairs, intelligence and security to testify in court to establish the whereabouts of Rashid Khalid, who was deported from South Africa on November 6.

"I suspect he is being detained in an American detention centre in a former Soviet country," Omar told AFP on Wednesday.

"I will subpoena all to locate Rashid and reveal the involvement of South African officials in the American war on terror," said the lawyer has been battling the government in court since November to obtain information on his client.

Omar said he had obtained an intelligence report to the home affairs minister stating that British authorities suspected Khalid of having links to an international terrorist network.

Linked to terrorism

"The reason for Rashid's abduction was the mere suspicion he was linked to international terrorism," Omar said, adding that while he had some ties to the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, he was "not a major player."

The controversy over the Khalid case unfolded in South Africa as the Council of Europe released a report charging that 14 European countries may have colluded in or tolerated the secret transfer of terrorist suspects by the United States, and two of them - Poland and Romania - may have harboured CIA detention centres.

The home affairs ministry maintains that Khalid was deported to Pakistan after he entered South Africa illegally in March last year and obtained a false work permit.

"We got a tip-off about an illegal person, an illegal foreigner. We did our normal arrest and a normal legal deportation," spokeswoman Cleopatra Mosana said.

But Omar said Khalid's family in Pakistan had not heard from his client and that he is not in Pakistan.

Khalid was arrested in the small eastern town of Estcourt along with another Pakistani national on October 28.

After the Pretoria high court ordered the government to provide information on the deportation, the home affairs department released a letter on Tuesday stating that Khalid was handed over to four Pakistani officials at an air force base in Pretoria on November 6.

"We put him on a flight back home. We then get confirmation from the Pakistani ministry of the interior to say, 'yes, he is here,' and that is where our business as home affairs ends," said Mosana.

- AFP