Guantanamo: the fallout

But prisoner advocates in Pakistan and Afghanistan are demanding accountability for past official acquiescenceor active participationin practices such as holding suspects without trial or charges,denial of access to legal counsel and possible abuse of detainees.

After September 11,2001,both countries,key allies in Bushs war on terror,voiced little public objection to what some critics call draconian US-backed measures against terror suspects. Pervasive reports of abuse,however,helped fuel anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and Afghanistan,helping militant groups muster support.

In Pakistan,a new civilian government has been in place for less than a year. The current leadership has repudiated many of former President Pervez Musharrafs policies,while continuing to ally with the US.

But human-rights groups have accused President Asif Ali Zardaris government of lagging in accounting for hundreds of Pakistani citizens who were picked up over the past seven years by security services without being charged or tried,some of them subsequently ending up in US custody.

This should be a message to my own government, said Amina Masood Janjua,the head of Defence of Human Rights,a group that has sought disclosure of the official Pakistani role in roundups of suspects.

Zardaris spokesman,Farhatullah Babar,said Obamas shutdown order raised the hopes of all who believe in the due process of law. Pakistan has requested that its six remaining nationals held at Guantanamo be repatriated,he said.

But Zardari is thought by most analysts to lack either the clout or the political will to confront Pakistans intelligence apparatus about its past involvement in secret detentions.

In Afghanistan,President Hamid Karzai praised Obamas move as a reconciliatory gesture,while indirectly suggesting that prisoner abuse had eroded public backing for the Western-led military mission in his country. Karzai,whose plummeting popularity could imperil his re-election bid this fall,has been accused by political opponents of doing little to prevent detainee abuse on Afghan soil.

Obamas decision probably will have repercussions at other US detention facilities,including at Bagram airfield. The move to close Guantanamo comes as a federal court in Washington weighs a challenge to the legality of the detention of four prisoners now at Bagram who allegedly were seized outside Afghanistan.

The American military in Afghanistan said it had no immediate information on how or whether the presidential directive would affect any of approximately 600 prisoners at Bagram. We will do whatever the administration determines is necessary, said a US spokeswoman at the base,Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green.

Muhammad Sagheer,a 55-year-old Pakistani national who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and subsequently held for two years at Guantanamo,said he and other prisoners were caged 8230; like wild animals. Sagheer,who filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the US government in Pakistani court upon his return,said he was wrongly accused of membership in al-Qaeda and physically tortured by his American interrogators. I hope all the inmates of Guantanamo will be released soon, he said.

Abdullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef,who became known as the voice of the Taliban when he served as the movements ambassador to Pakistan before 2001,said Obama was trying to get rid of the bad image Guantanamo had created.

But Zaeef,who spent three years at the detention centre before returning to Kabul,said the directive did not go far enough. He needs to restore justice to those who were persecuted there, he told Reuters. There were innocent people imprisoned.