Thaindian News

London, April 25 (IANS) US authorities have, in secret files to interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, described Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as a terrorist organisation, a media report said Monday.

Recommendations to interrogators at Guantánamo Bay rank the ISI (ISI) directorate alongside Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah groups in Lebanon as threats, the Guardian reported.

Being linked to any of these groups is an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity, the documents say.

“Through associations with these organisations, a detainee may have provided support to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against US or coalition forces (in Afghanistan),” the Guardian quoted the document called the “Joint Task Force Guantánamo Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants”, dated September 2007.

The Threat Indicator Matrix is used to decide who among the hundreds of Guantánamo detainees can be released. The ISI is listed among 36 groups, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, the Iranian intelligence services, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Though the document dates from 2007, it is unlikely the ISI has been removed from the current Threat Indicator Matrix, the newspaper said.

The revelation will cause fury in Pakistan and will further damage the already poor relationship between US intelligence services and their Pakistani counterparts, supposedly key allies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants in south Asia, it said.

Relations between America and Pakistan have been tense for years. A series of high-level attempts have been made in recent weeks to improve ties after American CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January.

In November, the Guardian published evidence that US intelligence services had been receiving reports of ISI support for the Taliban in Afghanistan for many years. The reports were frequent and detailed, if unconfirmed and sometimes speculative.

In classified memos outlining the background of 700 prisoners at Guantánamo, there are scores of references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting Al Qaeda. Pakistani authorities have consistently denied any links with insurgents in Afghanistan or Al Qaeda.

The documents detail extensive collaboration between the ISI and US intelligence services. Many of those transferred to Guantánamo Bay, including senior Al Qaeda figures such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Farraj al-Libbi, one of the group’s most capable operators, were arrested with Pakistani help or turned over to American authorities by Pakistani intelligence services, the newspaper said.

The details of the alleged ISI support for insurgents at the very least give an important insight into the thinking of American strategists and senior decision-makers who would have been made aware of the intelligence as it was gathered.

Many documents refer to alleged ISI activities in 2002 or 2003, long before the policy shift in 2007 that saw the Bush administration become much more critical of the Pakistani security establishment and distance itself from Pervez Musharraf, who was president, the Guardian said.