A coincidental meeting at the Kishon prison, near Haifa, between a Jordanian-Pakistani detainee and an Israeli lawyer has shed new light on the intelligence cooperation between Israel and Jordan and these countries' special relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency and America's war on global terrorism.

This could also turn out to be the first case of the United States handing Israel a world jihad suspect who is not linked to Palestinian terror or Hezbollah. Hundreds of similar cases - of suspects being transferred between countries - have been publicized over the last few years. However, this is the first time such a case has come to light in Israel.

"A few detainees were brought into the hall," said attorney Nizar Mahajna, who is from Umm al-Fahm. "And one of them told me, 'I'm not of them'" - meaning he was not a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza - "and asked, 'Do you have time for me?' I told him yes. He seemed very frightened."

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That day, September 22, Mahajna spent several minutes listening to the surprising story of Marwan Ibrahim Ali Jabur, and then had him sign a statement whose details are being publicized here for the first time.

Jabur is imprisoned at the Shin Bet security service wing at the Kishon jail. The Shin Bet has confirmed it is holding him on suspicion of terror activity and has stated his custody is subject to court approval. All information comes from the statement Jabur signed and the conversations he conducted with Mahajna and another lawyer, Maher Talhami, who is also dealing with the case.

Jabur was born on October 15, 1976, in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinian refugees from the Gaza town of Khan Yunis. When he was 2 years old, his family moved to Saudi Arabia. When Jabur was 19, he went to Pakistan to study mechanical engineering. There he met and married a Pakistani woman and they had three children. He became a Pakistani citizen - he holds both a Pakistani passport and a Palestinian ID. He completed his engineering internship in France, after which he returned to Pakistan and visited Afghanistan several times. This travel pattern, which characterizes quite a few Al-Qaida and international terror operatives who have been arrested since the September 11, 2001 attacks, aroused the suspicion of the Pakistani security services.

Jabur provided several versions of the circumstances of his arrest. The first appears in the statement he signed, in which he states he was arrested on May 9, 2004: "I was arrested by Pakistani forces because I was a foreigner and an Arab in Pakistan, under the excuse that I belonged to terrorist Islamist groups, which is not true."

Training in Afghanistan

Jabur may not be a member of a terror organization, but he did go to Afghanistan in 1999 and train there along with mujahideen. The training lasted for three months and focused primarily on using a pistol and a Kalashnikov. Jabur was supposed to be sent to fight in Chechnya along with the other trainees, but never made it there.

Once he returned to Pakistan, Jabur went back to Afghanistan 10 days after the September 11 attacks, this time to fight the Americans. He says this did not work out, and he returned to Pakistan two months later to complete his studies. During that period, he met with fighters who turned out to be senior jihad activists.

Jabur was arrested by Pakistani security services after someone informed on him. According to his statement, the security services held him for 15 days, severely torturing him. His interrogators burned him with cigarettes and tied his genitals to the wall with a rope.

After two weeks of interrogation, Jabur and others were transferred to the Americans. "The Pakistanis brought us to the airport, to an American plane, which took us to a place whose name I don't know," Jabur said in the statement. "Before we got on the plane they gave us an injection and a pill, so during the trip I was not awake. Then they took us to a place whose name I don't know, where I stayed for two years in an isolated jail.

"The room, or the underground dungeon, where I was alone, was one meter by one meter. In the cell, my left hand was cuffed to a chain attached to the wall no more than 15 centimeters from the dungeon floor, so I could not stand or straighten my back. I would defecate in a basin in the room, and I was naked for a long time. During that time - that is, two years - I did not see sunlight."

Torture subcontractors

Jabur said later in the statement, "During that same period, music was playing 24 hours a day and the soldiers would beat us nonstop." This description indicates Jabur was apparently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, where the United States holds Al-Qaida operatives.

Jabur's story comes in the wake of other accounts reported in the international media over the last few years, which are under investigation by human rights organizations and the European Parliament. The detention is based on the Bush administration's "renditions policy." Under this policy, whose legality is in question, intelligence services friendly to the United States arrest terror suspects based on their own information or that of the CIA. The suspects are interrogated and often tortured by foreign intelligence services that do not uphold human rights strictly.

The press refers to such detention centers as "ghost prisons" because no one will confirm their existence. Some suspects are transferred to Europe, and jails have allegedly been established in Poland, Romania and Bosnia. However, most of the ghost facilities are believed to be in undemocratic countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan.

About two years ago, Haaretz reported that such an interrogation facility existed in Amman, and that the United States was transferring international terror suspects there.

The Jordanian intelligence service functions as the United States' most important subcontractor in the war on global terror. There is an interrogation facility at intelligence headquarters in Amman, and that is where the suspects undergo difficult interrogations and torture. American investigators are known to monitor the interrogations from behind two-way mirrors or receive reports about their results. Americans are not present in the interrogation room itself, and thus have not violated American law.

The suspects are flown to the detention and interrogation facilities in planes the CIA charters from American concerns, mostly front companies. The international media and European aviation authorities have uncovered details about these flights, including the identity numbers of the planes, their make and model, the companies from which they were leased and their destinations.

Hundreds of such flights have landed at airports around the world since 2002. Records show dozens of flights flew to and from the Amman airport, and some flights are listed as having passed through Tel Aviv. According to the British civil liberties organization Statewatch, at least four occurred between 2003 and 2004. The Israel Airports Authority confirmed such flights took place.

There is no known American-Israeli interrogation facility on Israeli soil, although it is known that the Israeli and American intelligence organizations share information about the arrests and interrogation of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror suspects.

The close cooperation between Israel and Jordan regarding the war on terror is also nothing new. The two countries cooperated even before signing a peace treaty in 1994, and Jordan's King Hussein and his top officials, including the secret service heads, would secretly meet with Israeli leaders and intelligence officials. Once the peace treaty was signed, the cooperation increased.

A shot, a pill, a flight

Jabur's statement sheds more light on the matter. This is what he had to say about Jordan and Israel: "I was taken to Jordan by the American forces, on a plane, not before we got an injection and a pill. The Jordanian forces received us and began an interrogation, which lasted a month and a half. Afterward they took me to the border and handed me over to Israeli intelligence."

Jabur said he was taken by car from the detention facility in Jordan and that the Jordanians then told him to get on a bus to Israel. He said he refused and told them: "If you want to hand me over to the Jews, you'll have to do it yourself." The Jordanians put him in a car carrying Israeli security officials. "I saw sunlight for the first time when they brought me to Israel," said Jabur. "It was also the first time I saw the Red Cross in two and a half years."

In his statement, Jabur makes no complaints of torture against the Shin Bet, in contrast to what he said he underwent at the hands of Pakistani and American interrogators.

Mahajna and Talhami became familiar with the incident because the former represents the Palestinian Authority "prisoners club," and the two lawyers took down Jabur's statement on behalf of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.

According to the Shin Bet, Jabur was first detained in Israel on September 18, and his remand has been extended several times since then. The last extension was granted on October 23 for eight days.

The military tribunal at Kishon prison is due to discuss today whether to extend Jabur's remand again, indict him or return him to Jordan. Jabur is concerned about something else: that he will be transferred, like merchandise, to the Palestinian Authority security services.