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Pakistan Declares It Captured 2 Americans at Afghan Border
Monday, June 17, 2002
By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times

The detentions of Americans would raise troubling questions for the Bush administration, which has already drawn criticism for not granting prisoner-of-war status to suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- NYT
Pakistan said today that it was holding two Americans captured more than a month ago while trying to cross the border from Afghanistan, while Pakistani officials said privately that there might be more Americans among their prisoners.

Aziz Ahmed Khan, spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, said during a news conference here that the two Americans had been detained in the country's tribal areas, the remote region near the Afghan border where many Qaeda and Taliban fighters are believed to have taken refuge. He said the two had been captured with others who were also crossing the border from Afghanistan.

"I was told that probably two of them were American passport holders," Mr. Aziz said.

He declined to disclose details of the detentions or the names of those being held.

Later in the day, a senior Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the nationality of the two men, who have been in custody since early May, had been "reasonably ascertained" and that the United States was being notified about them, though officials in Washington said today that they had heard nothing.

Yet there are strong indications that a number of American officials have known about the captives' nationality for some time. The Associated Press said in a report that, according to a senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official, F.B.I. agents had questioned the two men. And Pakistani officials suggested that the process of verifying the prisoners' claims of American nationality was slowed down, with American concurrence, to give the Pakistanis time to interrogate them.
(More: NYTimes.com News Source)
2002 © The New York Times Company.

I think Pakistan should go ahead and keep them. Of course the argument will be that they probably have information.

Let’s see...

How about this? We go to Pakistan to interrogate the prisoners, informing them they will have to remain in Pakistan custody if they don’t cooperate -- never mind the fact that they can stay there even if they do cooperste.

Dan