Rome, June 27: Fifteen Pakistanis held for 10 months for suspected links to the al-Qaida terror network may seek damages from the Italian government after authorities dropped the charges, Pakistan's ambassador to Italy said today. ``These men have undergone great suffering during an imprisonment for acts they never committed or contemplated,'' ambassador Zafar Hilaly told a news conference.
The men, held in jail in the central Sicilian town of Caltanissetta, were ordered freed this week. They were transferred to a detention center for illegal immigrants and face deportation hearings. They had arrived in Sicily on August 5 aboard a cargo ship from Casablanca, Morocco. Authorities had suspected the men had been trying to smuggle plutonium to manufacture nuclear weapons.
However, after a series of tests on the ship's cargo and a lengthy investigation turned up nothing to link the individuals with Islamic terrorists, police dropped the charges. Authorities also found papers and phone numbers on notes in the possession of some of the suspects that they believed were intelligence codes used by al-Qaida.
However, Giovanna Annaloro, the lawyer for the detainees, said the police had inaccurate intelligence information. Annaloro said that one word written on a slip of paper in Urdu next to a phone number was that of a village in Pakistan not a code word used by al-Qaida to launch attacks.
Police in Caltanissetta had no immediate comment on Annaloro's claim. Bureau Report