By Melody Hanatani
Daily Press Staff Writer

DOWNTOWN Held captive in a car traveling out of control at full speed, gripping its sides with an automatic weapon pointed at him, Tighe Barry thought he had just been kidnapped by the Taliban.

“I work in Hollywood and I have never driven that fast in a stunt car in my life,” the Santa Monica activist said last week, reflecting on a recent 10-day trip to Pakistan to promote peace.

The incident, in which Barry and fellow peace activist Medea Benjamin were abducted by the Pakistani government, came on the second-to-last day of his tour to promote human rights in the Middle Eastern country.

The activists’ detainment was just the tip of the iceberg.

Barry, a 50-year-old prop man in the film industry, and Benjamin, the co-founder of CODE PINK — a non-profit women’s peace organization — departed for Pakistan in late November in a fact-finding mission of sorts, hoping to learn more about human rights violations committed under the administration of President Pervez Musharraf, whom they believe rules the country under the guise of democracy, all while jailing dissidents.

The father of two teenage sons, Barry has committed his life to promoting peace and ending the U.S.’ involvement in the Middle East. In 2003, he and film producer Patricia Foulkrod staged a peace rally on Santa Monica Beach, a rally that ties into Barry’s reason for visiting Pakistan.

He participated in the rally in efforts to stop a war in Iraq from taking place, regretting that he hadn’t done more to stop a campaign in Afghanistan.

“We thought we could catch up to stop the war in Iraq, and we were again too late,” Barry said.

While many people believe that a war could be waged against Iran, Barry is convinced the U.S. government’s next target is Pakistan, an American ally in the War on Terror.

“Iran is a strong country and Pakistan is weak, divided and falling apart,” Barry said from CODE PINK’s Venice office last week. “And they do have nuclear weapons.

“Our allies today become our enemies tomorrow.”

GETTING THEIR ‘SACK’ ON

On Nov. 23, the CODE PINK team of Barry, an organization volunteer, and Benjamin, who also founded human rights group Global Exchange, departed for Pakistan.

It’s a country where judges and lawyers — the promoters of democracy — are continuously beaten up, bloodied and jailed for their stances, Barry argued, who claims that 60 percent of the high court judges in the Middle Eastern country have been “sacked.”

Barry and Benjamin spent their time in Pakistan meeting with chief justices and political party leaders, interviewing everyone from everyday citizens to the owners of the largest television station in Pakistan, GEO TV, which has been taken off the air by Musharraf, in light of the emergency rule. Barry said he learned about the state of affairs in Pakistan, of how unhappy the citizens were with Musharraf, but that the lawyers were the only ones with the courage to speak up.

The American government is the responsible party fueling extremism in Pakistan, according to Barry.

“We are actually the biggest manufacturer of extremism in Pakistan,” he said.

To Barry, there were two defining events during the trip.

On Nov. 30, a few days into the trip, the team arrived at the office and home of lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, who is under house arrest by the Pakistani government. Barry interviewed Ahsan’s wife, Bushra, who had informed him that her husband had been under house arrest for 21 days at that time.

Ahsan’s jailors denied repeated requests by the CODE PINK team to meet and interview the 62-year-old head of the Supreme Court Bar Association. The United States ambassador dropped by Ahsan’s house the following day, requesting to see Ahsan, and when that request was also denied, she held a brief press conference denouncing the house arrest and stated she would work with Musharraf to release Ahsan.

Displeased, Barry and Benjamin publicly criticized the ambassador, arguing that the U.S. government should stop funding the Pakistani government.

“We felt we had embarrassed our own ambassador,” Barry said.

Then, just a few days later, Barry and Benjamin were arrested by the Pakistani government.

It started earlier in the day during a peaceful demonstration on the streets of Lahore, when a stranger grabbed Barry and informed him that his three-month visa had expired. A friend, who had observed the altercation, grabbed a lawyer from the nearby Lahore Press Club.

“It was literally a tug of war,” Barry said. “They let me go because they weren’t the police.”

Barry and Benjamin and a team of lawyers sought the haven of the Lahore Press Club for a few hours, during which time they would occasionally glance out the window and see a group of Pakistani Secret Service officers, in plainclothes, hanging outside the gate.

Afraid, Barry and Benjamin decided to head back to their host’s home. Moments after the CODE PINK team got into the car, a swarm of motorcycles encircled the vehicle, each carrying an automatic weapon pointed directly at the car.

“Now we’re thinking they’re the Taliban,” Barry explained.

The doors swung open and amidst the screaming, the driver and one of the passengers were pulled out of the car, leaving Barry and Benjamin in the car alone with a new strange driver who took the two Americans on the ride of their lives.

“This guy was driving like a lunatic,” Barry said.

They arrived at a police station and once they were seated, Benjamin’s cell phone started to ring.

Frustrated, the police officer demanded the cell phone be handed over. Instead, Benjamin stuck the phone down her shirt. Unable to retrieve the phone themselves, the police officers called in a female police officer, who began placing her hands all over Benjamin’s shirt.

“They never got her cell phone,” Barry said.

The police officers then changed face, bringing in tea and politely asking the two Americans a series of questions, all of which they refused to answer. It was then when the Pakistani special investigator, who was trained by the FBI, dropped a bombshell, informing Barry and Benjamin that he didn’t know why they were arrested and that the orders came from a higher authority, perhaps the American government, Barry said.

The arrest might have been tied in with the confrontation with the ambassador just days before, the investigator allegedly said.

Hours after they were arrested, Barry and Benjamin were given two options — sit around in jail for an undetermined amount of time and be deported, or leave the country on the next flight out.

They flew out the following day.

The detainment in Pakistan was just one of four or five separate arrests for Barry since 2002. He was most recently arrested on Dec. 6 — the day he returned to the States from Pakistan — when he stood up and spoke out during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Pakistan. On his wrist to this day is a detainment bracelet from the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.

“It’s a symbol of my resistance to this government,” Barry said.

melodyh@smdp.com