Two South African men being held in Pakistan have apparently told investigators that they received ”basic al-Qaeda training,” the Johannesburg-based ThisDay newspaper reported on Monday.
The newspaper said that Fordsburg doctor Feroz Ganchi and Laudium student Zubair Ismail had both admitted that they were recruited in South Africa and had travelled to Pakistan for training.
The pair have been detained under Pakistani military law, under which suspects can be held without charge for up to 24 months.
Ganchi appears not to have told his wife, Safiya, about the training, who told the Mail & Guardian recently that they were ”extremely patriotic people who fully support the government of our country”.
Ganchi first learned of her husband’s arrest from a newspaper report on July 25.
”The article did not mention Feroz but I knew it must be him,” she said in August.
Ganchi told the M&G Online on Monday that she was ”very disturbed” by the new report.
”After four weeks of interrogation I think all these confessions are false. By now they are going to say anything.”
ThisDay said that apart from the basic training they received at a safe house in Gujrat in July, the men apparently told investigators that they had planned to travel to an al-Qaeda camp at Shakai for more intensive training.
Asif Shahzad, crime reporter for a Pakistani daily, The Dawn, who has followed the arrests closely, said last week that the interrogation of Ganchi and Ismail was being driven by the United States, with Pakistani intelligence only assisting.
Shahzad said that according to local intelligence sources the CIA was responsible for identifying the 13 al-Qaeda suspects arrested in the town of Gujrat, including Ganchi (33) and Ismail (20). The heavy crackdown on al-Qaeda in Pakistan in recent months could not have been conducted by the Pakistanis alone, he added.
Agents from South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) were apparently given access to the men last week.
NIA director Vusi Mavimbela told ThisDay that it was not true that maps and documents allegedly found in the men’s possession showed that they had intended to attack key installations in South Africa.
The South African Press Association (Sapa) reported recently that a Lahore-based intelligence official said authorities believe the men wanted to target tourist sites in Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial centre. The men are believed to have arrived in Pakistan on a flight from the United Arab Emirates just days before their arrest.
Johannesburg daily The Star recently quoted unidentified police sources as saying that key South African landmarks were among the targets, including the Carlton Centre shopping mall, the JSE Securities Exchange and the Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg; Parliament and the V&A Waterfront mall in Cape Town; and the US embassy, government buildings and the Sheraton hotel in Pretoria.
According to information from the interrogation team in Pakistan, reports ThisDay, Feroz and Ismail met a contact person at a McDonald’s restaurant and were told where they would be staying. Two days later they travelled to Gujrat and had already begun their training when they were arrested a week later.
The newspaper said the men had told investigators that they had received training on ”international security matters” and had been shown movies about Osama bin Laden and Chechnya.
The raid in which the South Africans were arrested also netted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian with a $25-million bounty on his head for the 1998 twin US embassy bombings in East Africa.
Raja Munawar Hussain, the Gujrat police chief, said the two South Africans and Ghailani denounced the US and President George Bush when they were arrested more than a month ago.
”They were all very emotional and very aggressive,” he said. ”They were putting down Bush, saying he is our enemy and we will pursue him and America until we win.”
He said Ghailani was shaking with anger as he shouted: ”God is great! This is God’s land and we are his men.”