Pak panel demands closure of detention centre at Guantanamo

Islamabad, July 19 (PTI) A Pakistani parliamentary panel
Saturday demanded immediate closure of the U.S. detention
centre at Guantanamo Bay as it was in "complete violation of
the norms of the civilised world".

In a unanimous resolution, the Committee on human rights
of the Senate or upper house of parliament also called for the
release of six Pakistanis detained at Guantanamo Bay.

The Committee, which met at Parliament House under the
chairmanship of Senator S. M. Zafar, also discussed reports
about the detention of a Pakistani woman at the U.S. Army's
Bagram Detention Centre in Afghanistan for over four years.
The Pakistani media had recently reported on the issue.

Members of the committee underlined the need for more
coordinated efforts to ascertain whether there was any
Pakistani woman detained by the U.S. forces at Bagram or
Guantanamo Bay.

They directed the ministries of interior and foreign
affairs and the human rights division to take up the matter
with intelligence agencies to find out whether they had handed
over any Pakistani women to the U.S. forces for interrogation.

The panel observed that the issue is of immense
importance and all-out efforts should be made to get correct
information and to take appropriate steps to get any detained
women released. It issued directions to the concerned
ministries that bureaucratic snags should not hold up the
issue.

Earlier, the secretaries of the ministries of interior,
law, justice and human rights and senior officials of the
ministry of foreign affairs informed the committee about steps
taken by authorities to ascertain whether any Pakistani woman
was languishing in the Bagram Detention Centre.

The interior ministry has approached the ministry of
foreign affairs to contact the U.S. authorities in this regard
and the Pakistani embassy in Kabul has been asked to take up
the issue with authorities at the Bagram military base.

The committee was informed that the Public Affairs Wing
of the U.S. forces based in Bagram had denied that there was
any Pakistani woman prisoner in Afghanistan.