A Swedish citizen with the same name as a Swede who was arrested in 2001 and held for two years at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp was detained in Pakistan last month on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, police said Friday. Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali was arrested with three other Swedes and seven Turks close to tribal regions, a police officer said. A man was also travelling with them, he said.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to give out information he judged to be sensitive. He did not know about Ghezali's past activities, but confirmed he was carrying a Swedish passport bearing the name Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali. A police document obtained by The Associated Press lists the names of the 12 arrested men, including Ghezali and three other Swedish citizens, including a woman.
The document identified the Pakistani man as a member of a paramilitary force in the north-west. A Swedish national named Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali was held for more than two years by the United States at its prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after Pakistani authorities arrested him in 2001. Ghezali reportedly was part of a group of 156 suspected al Qaeda fighters caught while fleeing Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains. Ghezali denied any links to al Qaida and was released by the US in 2004.