Pakistan has terror camps: Defence Intelligence Agency

Washington, Aug 1 (UNI) Despite Pakistan's repeated assurances that there were no terrorist camps operating in its territory, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had come out earlier this year with documentary proof that such camps existed in the Balakot area of northeast Pakistan.

The US government presented this as evidence before a California court on March 28 in the trial against a 23-year-old Pakistani American, Hamid Hayat, who attended such a camp.

This evidence strengthened the prosecution case against Hayat, who has been convicted for planning to wage a war against the United States after training at a terrorist camp.

The camps came to light when a satellite imagery expert Eric Benn, an analyst from the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), testified in the Hamid Hayat case.

The government took the help of the DIA to prove that the terror camps existed and operated in various parts of Pakistan from 2000 to 2005, and Hayat attended a well-known Jaish-e-Mohammed camp, located in the Balakot area of Pakistan.

After reviewing the satellite imagery for the jury, Mr Benn said the mountainous location and description of the camp near Balakot in northeast Pakistan are consistent with statements made by Hayat during an interrogation by FBI agents last June, when he returned to the United States after two years of training in Pakistan.

''The kind of information I got out of the (Hayat interview) transcript is consistent with the physical things I observed,'' Mr Benn testified in US District Court.

''This would be a militant camp.'' His testimony undermines Pakistan's insistence that there are no terrorist camps in the country.

Nailing Pakistan's lies, Mr Benn told the district court in California that although he did not detect any formal weapons training, including firing ranges, targets, rocket launchers or explosives testing, it did not mean they were not taking place. The structures and trail in the remote terrain fit the signature of terrorist training, as opposed to regular training of Pakistani armed forces.

MORE UNI XC PR RN2020