"Musharraf 'sold' innocent countrymen to be put in Guantanamo Bay jail"

London, June 5 : In a startling revelation, a top UK legal official has said that in exchange of millions of dollars, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had allowed a large number of his countrymen to be put into the Guantanamo Bay prison during the past six years.

The revelation assumes significance amid news reports of a large of Pakistanis going missing during the past few years.

He revealed that those kept in the prison, were treated inhumanely, and the worst torture methods like filling their lungs with water, were adopted to force them to admit teir involvement in terror activities.

UK Legal Director Zachary Katznelson revealed that as many as 66 per cent of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were picked up from Pakistan, after Musharraf's nod.

Zachary was delivering a lecture on 'Forgotten prisoners of Guantanamo Bay', organised by Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) on Wednesday.

Zachary said that it was Musharraf who "sold" the innocent people of his country without proving any charge against them. "Not a single charge has been proved against these prisoners till now," The News quoted him as saying.

He said that 20 per cent of the prisoners were handed over by the Afghanistan government, while the rest 14 per cent were handed over by other countries. "Not a single trial had been conducted since the opening of Guantanamo Bay in 2002," he said.

Zachary said that the prisoners housed in Guantanamo Bay were living in miserable conditions where they were not allowed to meet or contact their families through telephones. He also displayed the pictures of a cell made up of the iron walls, iron ceiling and iron floor. "The officials turn the air-conditioning on when they intend to torture some prisoner which led to decrease in mercury up to the minus degrees," he said.

Zachary also pointed out various techniques used for torturing the prisoners to make them accept the crime that they had never committed. "One of the barbarous techniques for torture is water pouring, in which the prisoner is left with no choice than to admit that he had committed some crime as his lungs are filed up with water," he said.

Claiming that majority of Pakistani prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, he quoted the case of Mohammad Paracha who had been arrested in 2003 from Bangkok by the CIA officials. "They alleged that Paracha had a talk with Osama Bin Laden during 2001 but in fact he is an innocent man who was running his business of import and export in Bangkok. Some officials from Pakistan Ministry of Interior met Paracha and concluded that he was neither a terrorist nor a threat to Pakistan and America," he said.

ANI