Background:
Adil al-Jazeeri, also known as Adil Amin, is from Algeria. Al-Jazeeri was resident in Afghanistan for more than 15 years, but is thought to have fled the country after the fall of the Taliban. He subsequently lived in Peshawar, in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan.
Al-Jazeeri was arrested on June 17 2003 in the district of Hayatabad in Peshawar. Pakistani authorities believe he served as a contact between al-Qaeda and the Taliban and also as an aide to the former Afghan foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil in Kabul.
Al-Jazeeri was held and questioned by Pakistani police. An unidentified Pakistan intelligence official was quoted saying he was being subjected to "some tough questioning".
After interrogation, Al-Jazeeri was handed over to U.S. authorities, and was flown out of Peshawar on a small plane in the custody of U.S. agents, while blindfolded and with his hands bound behind his back. He was allegedly taken to the U.S. air force base in Bagram, Afghanistan, for interrogation.
Al-Jazeeri’s wife, Riyazat Amin, a mother of four and one of many wives whose husbands have been arrested and taken out of the country, complains that they have no way to reach their husbands or “fight their cases in any court of law.”
Riyazat, who lives in a crowded mud-brick house in the village of Regi near the northwestern city of Peshawar, insists her husband was innocent. “My husband had no links with Al Qaeda and if he had any links with Al Qaeda then Al Qaeda people would take care of us because we are living very miserable lives.”
She received no formal notification of her husband’s detention, and after having received a few letters from her husband from Bagram, has not heard from him since.
Al-Jazeeri’s detention is not “confirmed” by the U.S. government. He is among thousands of ‘ghost detainees’, also referred to by Human Rights Watch as the CIA’s ‘disappeared’ prisoners, who remain detained for an undefined period of time in undisclosed locations.
The use of forced disappearances and secret incommunicado detention violates the most basic principles of a free society. The United States has refused to disclose their whereabouts and has refused to allow them access to their families, lawyers or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
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