NEW DELHI: The Amnesty International is ``gravely concerned about reports" that American intelligence agents had detained and interrogated terror suspects in secret places in Pakistan.

A report, released at a press conference on Tuesday by Amnesty International India director Mukul Sharma, said Human Rights First, had claimed that the United States maintained secret detention facilities at Kohat and Alizai in Pakistan.

``U.S. intelligence agents are also alleged to have taken control of known places of detention in Pakistan (or parts of them) without declaring such places to be U.S. detention centres... they are also alleged to have been aware of or participated in torture or other ill-treatment, and to have moved detainees to other unofficial or secret detention centres, including in Afghanistan," it stated.

Pointing out that secret detention was prohibited under international human rights law, the Amnesty said: ``If the U.S. has established secret detention facilities within Pakistan, the Pakistani authorities may have been complicit in human rights violations.''

Complicity

It stated that if the Pakistani authorities had facilitated abduction of persons, knowingly provided an essential facility or placed its own territory at the disposal of the U.S. or another State, then this might constitute complicity.

The Amnesty said that though Pakistani officials had consistently denied that foreign forces were allowed to operate in Pakistan, there was ``strong evidence'' that U.S. forces had, on several occasions, conducted armed operations in the tribal areas, at times using excessive force and allegedly carrying out extra-judicial executions.

On the role of Pakistan, the Amnesty claimed that the country had violated a wide array of human rights, including the right to life, to the security of the person, to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, to freedom from torture and to legal remedies and reparations in the ``war on terror.''

``The clandestine nature of the `war on terror' makes it impossible to ascertain exactly how many people have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, forcibly disappeared, tortured or ill-treated, or extra-judicially executed. Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said in June 2006 that since 2001 some 500 `terrorists' had been killed, and over 1,000 arrested... "

While recognising that Pakistan had the duty to prevent and punish terrorist crimes, the Amnesty argued that, at the same time, Islamabad should respect national and international human rights' laws.

The group called on Pakistan to apply its constitutional and legal safeguards and to honour its international commitments by urgently addressing human rights' violations committed in the name of ``war on terror.''

The Amnesty demanded that Pakistan end arbitrary arrests and detention, detention of persons in secret locations and enforced disappearances, use of torture and other ill-treatment and unlawful transfer of detainees to other countries.

It also called on Islamabad to bring to justice in a fair trial all those responsible for committing, ordering or authorising torture and enforced disappearances.

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