Fears for Pakistan terror suspect

Mr Rashid was allegedly transferred by extraordinary rendition

Rights group Amnesty International says it is increasingly worried about a terror suspect being held in Pakistan.

Khalid Mehmood Rashid was extradited 18 months ago from South Africa to Pakistan, where he had been held in secret detention, Amnesty says.

His lawyer says he believes his client is wrongly accused of links to the July 2005 London suicide bombings.

Amnesty says that he is being denied access to a lawyer and medical care.

Pakistani government officials were not immediately available for comment.

'Totally unacceptable'

Mr Rashid's lawyer, Hashmat Habib, said his client had gone to South Africa to work, before being detained on visa charges in 2005.

Amnesty say that Mr Rashid has been denied access to lawyers

He was then handed over to police following the London attacks, he said.

"Then he was kept 'somewhere in illegal detention' until mid-2006 when he was found to be in the custody of the Pakistan government," Mr Habib told the BBC.

Repeated petitions for his release finally resulted in Mr Rashid's appearance before a Pakistani federal review board on 12 April, he said.

There, he was remanded in police custody until 26 June. The judges ordered he be moved to Rawalpindi central jail, receive medical attention and be allowed to meet family members," Mr Habib said.

"But when his mother and father went to see him at the central jail he was not there.

"The government is openly flouting the courts orders. I have yet to see a single charge that has been levelled against him. We now intend to file a petition in the Supreme Court."

Amnesty says that Mr Rashid should be given a fair trial or released without delay. It says his family had feared he had been killed.

"Mr Rashid has already suffered 18 months of secret detention, and it is totally unacceptable for the Pakistan authorities to continue to deny him access to his lawyer, family and medical care," Erwin Van Der Borght, acting director of Amnesty International's Africa programme, said in a statement.

'Special circumstances'

A security source told the AFP news agency that Mr Rashid's alleged contacts with the 7 July bombers were being investigated.

Four suicide bombers, three of them Pakistani descent, blew themselves up on London's transport system on 7 July 2005, killing themselves and more than 50 others. More than 700 people were wounded.

At least two of the four bombers - Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer were known to have visited Pakistan in the months before the attacks.

Mr Rashid's family and lawyers have accused the South African authorities of arranging his removal to Pakistan under the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme.

But South Africa's govenment has repeatedly denied the charge, saying he was deported "under special circumstances" and flown to Pakistan, where he was formally handed over to officials.

South Africa's government also insists that Mr Rashid did not appeal against his deportation.

It has said the unusual nature of his deportation - in a chartered plane that left from a South African military base - arose from allegations he was connected to international terror cells.