Kayani orders Pak brigadier to be detained for terror links

Abbas said the investigation into Khans links with an outlawed militant group was underway. He avoided giving details,saying it could affect the probe. Khan allegedly had links with the banned Hizb-ut-Tehrir and was reportedly involved in a plot to attack the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan,sources said.

Reports have said that US drones operate from Shamsi airbase,but Pakistani authorities have denied them. BBC quoted an unnamed officer as saying that army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had personally ordered Khans arrest.

Sources close to Khans family told BBC Urdu that he had not returned home on May 6. The family was then told that Khan had been stopped for questioning and would soon reach home. A senior army officer told BBC on condition of anonymity that no formal chargesheet had been framed against Khan but the armys Special Investigation Branch is conducting an inquiry into his links with Islamic extremists.

Khans family was reluctant to talk to the media and also unwilling to approach the courts. The family was hopeful that Khan would be freed due to his three decades of service,BBC reported. The brigadiers father was a junior commissioned officer in the army and his younger brother is a Colonel working with a key intelligence agency.

Khans son and son-in-law are Captains in the army. There have been several reports in recent years about efforts by the Hizb-ut-Tehrir to infiltrate Pakistans armed forces. Shortly after the US raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2,the Hizb-ut-Tehrir distributed pamphlets in military cantonments that called on army officers to establish an Islamic caliphate. It is a slap in the respected officers faces that on May 2,US helicopters intruded in the dark of night and barged into a house like thieves…It could not have been possible without the acquiescence of your high officials, a media report quoted the pamphlet as saying.