Pakistan probing SA detainees
Nombini Matomela
31 August 2004
National Intelligence Agency Minister Ronnie Kasrils says Pakistani authorities are continuing with investigations around the two South Africans arrested in Gujrat a month ago on suspicion of being terrorists.
Feroz Abu Bakar Ganchi, a medical doctor from Fordsburg in Johannesburg, and Zubair Ismail, an Islamic student from Laudium in Pretoria, were arrested in Gujrat, Pakistan in July along with Al-Qaeda's most wanted operative, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian implicated in the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Kasrils, briefing the media in Cape Town last week, said the National Intelligence Agency had had "very limited access" to information on the two men's detention.
"There is an investigation under way in relation to what the two were doing in Pakistan and in the company of a known and wanted Al-Qaeda operative at a particular address ... They clearly were there", Kasrils said.
Pakistani police claimed
after the arrest that the two had confessed under interrogation that they were planning to attack key tourist sites in South Africa - a claim that was at once dismissed by the South African government.
A team of intelligence officers have since visited Pakistan and confirmed with the relevant authorities that, as far as they know, no attacks were being planned against South Africa.
Kasrils said the government was not in a position to reveal any further information until the two being investigated had been proven guilty. "But we are concerned and we are looking in this matter, in cooperation with the Pakistani authorities."
Source: BuaNews
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