Five American terrorism suspects detained in Pakistan have declared their innocence and say they have been tortured by U.S. investigators and Pakistani police in jail.
As the five suspects arrived in a police van for court Tuesday in the eastern city of Sargodha, one of the suspects tossed a scrap of paper to reporters.
The suspects wrote on the paper that U.S. FBI and Pakistani police have tortured them, and that they are being framed. The paper also said the police are keeping the suspects away from their families and the media.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire rejected the allegations as "completely baseless." Pakistani police have also denied the torture accusations.
The five men, all Muslims from the Washington, D.C. area, were detained in December in Pakistan's Punjab province. Police accuse them of plotting terrorist attacks in Pakistan and seeking to join Islamist militants fighting U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.