Pakistan's rights watchdog expressed "immense concern" yesterday at the death in custody of an Islamic cleric suspected of having links with al-Qaeda.
Qari Noor Mohammad, a religious teacher, died in jail in eastern industrial city Faisalabad on Wednesday, a week after being arrested with another cleric in a crackdown against Osama bin Laden's terror network.
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Police said Mohammad died of a heart attack, while religious circles in Faisalabad claimed he was tortured.
"Reports that [Mohammad's] body showed marks of torture is a matter of immense concern," a Human Rights Commission statement said.
The independent rights monitor said it was alarmed about the "lack of transparency and failure to follow the rule of law in ongoing actions against so-called militants."
Faisalabad police chief Abid Saeed said on Wednesday that Mohammad was detained for interrogation "over reports that he was involved in anti-state activities."
Pakistani security agencies have arrested more than 60 al-Qaeda suspects since mid-July, including Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani communications expert, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa.
Their capture yielded information on al-Qaeda and led to the discovery of fresh plans to launch attacks in Britain, Pakistan and the United States ahead of US presidential elections in November, according to intelligence officials.
The arrests of the militants and the failure to give them access to lawyers has drawn severe criticism from both Islamists and secular rights activists.
"While the need to eradicate militancy is immense, the present crude manner of dealing with the problem can bring only negative results," the rights commission said.
"The failure to inform the public about whom the operations in various parts of the country are directed towards, or what they are intended to achieve, can only cast doubts and suspicions over the entire campaign and contribute to the expanding public sentiment against the anti-militancy drive."
In other developments, two suspected foreign militants arrested after a shootout in northwestern Pakistan had links with al-Qaeda, security officials said yesterday.
Pakistan, a key US ally in the war on terror, has stepped up its campaign against alleged terror suspects over the past month, arresting around 70 foreign and Pakistani militants accused of working for al-Qaeda.
Among those captured were Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged al-Qaeda computer expert and Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian who had a US$5 million bounty on his head for his suspected involvement in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in east Africa.
The latest arrests came Thursday after a shootout between the two men and intelligence agents in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, on Thursday.
The suspects had opened fire after being stopped at a checkpoint and threw a grenade at the agents, who returned fire.
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