Pakistan sends British suspect home - rights group

ISLAMABAD, Sep 7 (Reuters) A British man held in Pakistan without charge for more than a year on suspicion of links to the al Qaeda militant network has been released and sent back to Britain, a human rights group said today.

Rangzieb Ahmed, was arrested in August last year in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, the Human Rights Watch group said. He was released on the orders of the Supreme Court.

The rights group said Ahmed said in an interview provided by intermediaries he had been repeatedly tortured by Pakistani security agencies and interrogated several times by U.S law enforcement personnel.

He also said he had been interviewed by British security services during his detention, Human Rights Watch said.

Ahmed had denied any wrongdoing or involvement with al Qaeda, the rights group said.

''Rangzieb Ahmed should not be arrested or mistreated upon arrival in the UK,'' the group's South Asia researcher Ali Dayan Hasan said in a statement.

''The fact is that during one year of detention, the Pakistanis, the British and the US have been unable to unearth a shred of evidence against this person.'' Spokesmen at the British High Commission in Islamabad and the Pakistani Interior Ministry were not immediately available for comment.

''Ahmed maintains that he never confessed to any involvement with terrorism during the interrogation. In any case, a confession obtained under torture would have no basis in law,'' Human Rights Watch's Hasan said.

Ahmed had been involved with militant groups fighting Indian security forces in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and jailed in India, the rights group said.

British authorities had secured his release from India and he had returned to Britain before coming to Pakistan in 2006, it said.

''He denies any subsequent involvement in militancy or any connection with the al Qaeda network,'' it said.

Several British militants have visited Pakistan, including two of the four young men who set off suicide bombs on London's transport system in July 2005, killing 52 people.

Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani-British man suspected of involvement in a plot broken up in Britain last year to blow up US-bound airliners, is also in custody in Pakistan.

A Pakistani rights worker also said Ahmed had been tortured while in custody.

''He was tortured in custody for one year without any charge by American, British and Pakistani intelligence agents,'' said Khalid Khawaja, a former official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency who later became a rights activist.

REUTERS ARB DS1309