ISLAMABAD — Authorities at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba regarded Pakistan’s national intelligence agency, ISI, as either involved in or supporting terrorism, according to leaked documents made public Monday, a designation that could anger leaders in the nuclear-armed Muslim country and worsen a relationship already marred by mutual distrust.
Disclosures that tie the ISI to terrorist groups and extremist organizations are nothing new. Just last week, in a visit to Pakistan, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, bluntly raised the allegation of a relationship between the ISI and the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban wing. Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani dismissed such accusations from the U.S. as “negative propaganda.”
But the latest disclosure in a new round of Wikileaks documents focusing on U.S. handling of Guantanamo Bay detainees, comes at a time when relations between Washington and Islamabad are at one of their lowest points ever.
The September 2007 document, titled “Matrix of Threat Indicators,” lists the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, as one of 65 “terrorist and terrorist support entities.” The list, which also includes al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban, was drafted to help interrogators at Guantanamo determine a detainee’s linkage with terrorist organizations and what future threat the individual may have posed. Los Angeles Times
