Torture at Hands of Pakistan Secret Services

Such is the savagery of Pakistan's intelligence agencies that those who are detained in the country during British-led counter-terrorism operations can suffer an appalling fate.

Imran ? he is too frightened to give permission for his real name to be used ? is a poor, illiterate taxi driver who says he was tortured by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) for three days.

He had been detained because MI5 and Scotland Yard were desperate to find a British man called Salahuddin Amin who had been his passenger on a number of occasions.

Imran tells how men in plain clothes dragged him off the street and drove him to a police station in Rawalpindi, where he was hooded and handcuffed, and his feet shackled.

"I was really terrified," he says. "I was sweating heavily and I had difficulty breathing. I was shivering with fear. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

"I didn't resist or try to struggle. They put me in a car, drove me a little way and took me down some stairs. After a little while a few people came in ? I don't know how many ? and started beating me.

"They didn't say anything to me or ask me any questions, they just swore at me and then started beating me.

"As they started beating me this machine started up, making this awful noise, a really loud hum. It was like being next to a jet engine. They were using sticks and straps, and it seemed to go on for a very long time.

"I was crying and asking them who they were, why they were beating me, and what they wanted from me. They didn't say anything. They just kept beating me. They were hitting my back, my arms, my legs, and the soles of my feet.

"Eventually the noise stopped and they stopped beating me and one of them said: 'Where's Salahuddin?' When I told them I had dropped him off at a petrol station, they started beating me again, asking why I hadn't dropped him at someone's house.

"I said I'm a taxi driver, he was my passenger, I always drop my passengers where they say they want to be dropped.

"One of them said let's drill a hole in his side and I could hear an electric drill being switched on. It was placed against my side and I could feel my shirt being twisted and torn by it. Then they threatened to cut off my leg with an angle grinder, and I could hear the angle grinder being started up."

While there is no suggestion of any British collusion, his experiences show how Pakistani intelligence agencies routinely use torture.

A number of British citizens have been tortured by the ISI after being detained at the request of the British security service or other British authorities in recent years, and they, their families or their lawyers say MI5 must have known ? and even wanted ? this to happen.

The torture of Imran ended only when his captors said they had found Amin. A number of Amin's associates, who were known to be planning a bomb attack in the London area, had been arrested and MI5 and British police were anxious to apprehend Amin, 35, from Luton, Bedfordshire.

The ISI subsequently held Amin without trial for 10 months, and he says he would be questioned under torture, and then asked the same questions by two MI5 officers, men calling themselves Matt and Chris who visited him several times between torture sessions.

In 2005 Amin was flown to the UK, convicted of conspiring to cause explosions along with four other men, and jailed for life.

Imran says he was kept prisoner for a further eight days in a pitch-black cell, about six feet long and four wide. "I could hear other people crying, and I could hear the jet engine machine a couple of times a day," he says.

A doctor treated him for a stomach complaint but would not look at the wounds inflicted during torture. A little bizarrely, perhaps, Imran also says that the food he was given by the ISI was excellent.

On the 11th day he was hooded again, put in the back of a car and driven for 20 minutes. He was then taken from the car and his hood removed by a man who ordered him not to turn around.

The man climbed back in the car and drove away. Once his eyes became accustomed to the glare, Imran realized that he was standing in a quiet corner of a busy Rawalpindi street market.

"I took a taxi to the home of an uncle who lives in Rawalpindi. When I was reunited with my family everyone was crying and hugging me, cuddling me. I discovered that my son had sat on the steps of our home every day waiting for me to come home."

In 2007 Imran traveled to the UK where he thought he would be safer and applied for asylum. He was sent to the Norton district of Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside, under the dispersal program for asylum seekers. His asylum claim has still not been resolved, and he has not seen his wife and three sons for two years.