By DPA
Islamabad : A Pakistani man accused of using his computer skills to relay information between Al Qaeda cells planning attacks in the US and Britain has been freed by Pakistani intelligence after three years of detention without a trial, his attorney said Tuesday.
Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who is believed to be 25, was reunited with his family in the city of Karachi several weeks ago, lawyer Babar Awan said.
Awan noted that his client had been held without charge and had never appeared in court but did not give any details about the circumstances of his detention by Pakistan’s top military spy organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Khan was accused of managing e-mail communications between Al Qaeda elements. His detention in Lahore in July 2004 reportedly led to the arrest of a key suspect in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people, as well as yielding clues to terrorist plots in Britain and the US.
Police at the time said a search of his computer files and e-mail records revealed an active global Al Qaeda network.
Security sources told BBC television that Khan had been quietly released several weeks ago and that his home in Karachi was under surveillance.
Deputy Attorney General Naheeda Mehboob Ilahi also told a Supreme Court hearing that Khan had been released.
Khan is one of hundreds of people picked up in recent years by intelligence services on suspicion of terrorism links.
“Many of these people have done nothing wrong,” said Hashmat Habib, who represents dozens of the missing people. “Their only crime was that they were either religiously minded or knew someone in a jehadi organization.”
The Supreme Court took up the their cases last year after affected families and rights organizations held protest rallies, and the court began to exert pressure on security agencies to produce them.
The court Tuesday said it would release a German national of Pakistani origin who was produced by the ISI after two months of detention without charge. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry Monday gave spy chiefs one day to produce him and two other men in the custody of the intelligence services.
Aleem Nasir, a gem trader, was picked up at Lahore airport on June 18 after visiting Pakistan’s restive tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan on business, local media cited lawyers as saying.
“He is a free citizen, and the court is going to release him,” Chaudhry said.
A missing Malaysian national of Pakistani origin, Imran Munir, was also produced in court, which ordered his transfer to police custody and treatment in hospital for an illness he developed in detention. His case was to be heard in the court at a later date.
According to the ISI, a military court had previously sentenced Munir to eight years in prison for espionage. But the missing man’s lawyers as well as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan claimed he was jailed because of an affair he had with a female relative of a military officer.
Abdul Basit, another man missing since 2004, when he was arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill President Pervez Musharraf, was also produced, but his fate was not immediately clear.
Defence lawyer Habib said up to 500 people were arrested in the wake of two bomb attacks on Musharraf in December 2003.