Posted on 01/14/2003 4:24:56 PM PST by knighthawk
JACK "Jihad" Thomas was arrested in Pakistan 11 days ago but Australian authorities, who had been chasing him since September 2001, yesterday still did not know where he was.
As family and friends described the 29-year-old as a gentle man devoted to his religion, a spokesman for the Australian High Commission in Islamabad said consular officials had not yet had access to him.
And they had not yet found out where he was being held following his arrest on January 4 on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda.
"We have put in a request for access and are awaiting a response," the spokesman said. "He was picked up in Karachi but has not been formally charged. This is in accordance with Pakistani law."
Federal police commissioner Mick Keelty said Mr Thomas's family had reported him missing after September 11, 2001.
They were concerned about his welfare. They thought he might have been in the vicinity of Pakistan," Mr Keelty said.
But despite ASIO joining the hunt, Australian authorities had not tracked down Mr Thomas until Pakistani police advised on January 9 that he had been picked up five days earlier. Mr Thomas, who changed his name to Jihad, was born and raised in Frankston, south of Melbourne.
His father, Ian Thomas, said yesterday his son had been arrested on a plane that was due to leave for Australia. "He was doing his best to come back to Australia and had never changed his name or identity while in Pakistan," Mr Thomas said.
A family friend of 15 years, Andrew, said that while Jihad's father and brother were shooters, Jihad had repeatedly refused to get a gun licence.
"He told his dad he just didn't like the feeling of holding guns," he said.
A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Daryl Williams said investigations were continuing into whether Mr Thomas had committed an offence under Australia's counter-terror legislation.
"He is yet to be charged with an offence under Pakistani laws so it is premature to speculate whether extradition is possible," the spokeswoman said.
"At present, he is being detained under Pakistani law and is in no different position to any other Australian arrested overseas."
Labor justice and customs spokesman Daryl Melham said Mr Thomas should be given access to a lawyer.
Mr Melham said it was a "disgrace" that Mr Williams had let David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, the two Australians captured in Afghanistan in 2001, be detained without charge in a US military prison in Cuba.
Islamic Council of Victoria president Yasser Soliman, who met Mr Thomas a couple of times in 1998, said he "seemed to be a fairly ordinary fellow".
"He was friendly, confident and he appeared to me to be a well-balanced man," Mr Soliman said. "From what people have told me he was just a man who wanted to learn more about Islam."
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