The Hindu : Al-Qaeda leader to be treated `humanely'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 05, 2003

International

International

Al-Qaeda leader to be treated `humanely'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington march 4. The Bush administration is officially saying that the captured Al-Qaeda operations leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, will be treated according to international laws with officials here maintaining that domestic laws do not allow torture of a prisoner. That said the administration is not willing to disclose where it is that Mohammad is being held with one speculation that the captured terrorist mastermind could be held in a facility at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where the CIA runs an interrogation centre.

From the air base, he could be shifted to the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba which is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Further, the facility in Guantanomo Bay holds scores of other

Al-Qaeda terrorists who have been brought here for detention and interrogation.

While the administration here maintains that Mohammad, or for that matter any captured terror suspect, will be treated `humanely', the real debate is if this scenario holds should a terror suspect is held at an overseas facility even while being technically in the hands of the U.S. In the case of Mohammad, in spite of what was originally dished out from Islamabad, the authorities there "handed over'' Mohammad to the U.S. in a very short period of time. But reports in the local media make the point that the authorities while trying to walk that fine line between interrogation and torture, do go through a number of routine processes and procedures that use `stress' and `duress'.

In fact, it is said that one of the techniques used by the CIA in the face of non-cooperation of detainees is to put them through long hours of standing or kneeling with hoods over the faces or deprivation of sleep with bright lights on. It is unlikely that the administration here will be making headlines out of what Mohammad may be telling his interrogators, if he chooses to speak. But the all round anticipation is that at some point in the not-too-distant future intelligence agencies will have a better idea and understanding of the near and longer term objectives of the Al-Qaeda.

In the short term, there is also the feeling that Mohammad could throw light on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Analysts are making the point that the top Al-Qaeda leadership including Osama are bound to be jittery in the aftermath of the arrest. There is also a perception that Mohammad cannot lead his captors to where exactly Osama, for instance, is holed up as the top Al-Qaeda leader would have moved his position now. For all the positive attention on Pakistan — including a congratulatory call from the Secretary of State, Colin Powell to the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf on Sunday — and the flaunting of Islamabad's `cooperation' in the war against terror, one other crucial aspect is also not going unnoticed: that the terror kingpins are not holed up in some remote area of Pakistan or in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but right in the heart of the country and in large cities.

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