Fri, Dec 29, 2006 - Page 6 News List

Author abducted, Pakistani security services suspected

'BLACK INSTITUTION' A book, co-written by the missing writer, criticizes both the US military and the Pakistani security service, which is accused of having him abducted

AP , ISLAMABAD

In his chronicle of life as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay, Afghan writer Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost describes his three years of humiliating detention for alleged ties to al-Qaeda.

Now, he has lost his liberty again -- this time believed jailed by the Pakistani intelligence service for the book's fierce criticism of the agency's role in the US-led war on terrorist groups.

Just weeks after the Sept. 3 release of The Broken Shackles of Guantanamo, co-written with his brother and fellow Guantanamo detainee Badruz Zaman Badar, Dost was taken away as he left a mosque after prayers in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar, where the family has lived for nearly 30 years.

Badar, 36, hasn't seen Dost since and thinks he was detained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In the book, the brothers condemn the agency as a "black institution" and accuse it of selling them into US custody.

There is no official word on Dost's whereabouts, although the rights group Amnesty International also thinks he is held by the government. Pakistan's military and ISI officials did not respond to requests for comment on Dost's case.

The brothers are both journalists and run a gemstone business. Dost has written more than 30 books, including poetry, and has edited magazines sympathetic to militant Islam, dating back to support for the Muslim guerrillas who fought Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The brothers were both arrested in Peshawar in November 2001 and transferred to the US military in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantanamo.

According to the book and details from "enemy combatant" review hearings at Guantanamo, the brothers were suspected of having links with Islamic extremists. Dost was accused of running a liaison office for al-Qaeda in Herat, Afghanistan. He denied that, and the brothers were eventually freed a few months apart in 2005.

On Sept. 29, unidentified men took Dost away from the mosque, bundling him into a jeep and driving off as one of Dost's sons looked on. Dost, who has nine children, hasn't been heard from, and his family fear for his safety.

In a recent report, Amnesty International said Pakistani authorities have violated "custodial safeguards" by not producing Dost in court or allowing him access to a lawyer or his family.

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