When I read In the Line of Fire, the autobiography of Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, I was not expecting to find much in common with him, other than the fact we'd each written controversial accounts of our life this year and shared the same publisher. Throughout the first half of his account, however, I found some uncanny resemblances. Just like me, Musharraf's mother is from Delhi and his parents migrated in 1947 from India to Pakistan. As a youth he'd been part of a street-gang, then spent time in Turkey, backed the Kashmiri struggle for independence, and (later) supported the beleaguered people of Bosnia. But the latter half of the book, and the part which has caused much of the recent media and political storm, is where the similarity ends. Although both our lives were irretrievably changed by events following 11 September 2001, Musharraf became Bush's key ally in the "war on terror" and I one of its victims.

The unimaginable ordeal of being labelled and treated as an "enemy combatant" - supposedly a member of al-Qaida or the Taliban captured on the battlefield - is one I shared with many of my fellow-Guantànamo detainees, hundreds of whom were abducted from their homes or from the streets of Pakistan's major cities: Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad.

I was living in Islamabad with my wife and children when, on the night of 31 January, 2002, I heard the doorbell ring - for the last time. What followed is nowadays described euphemistically as "extraordinary rendition". What that meant for me - and hundreds of others seized in this way - was kidnap, abduction, false imprisonment and ultimately, torture. Not until I was cuffed, shackled, hooded, and bundled away in a vehicle and safely in a holding cell did they ask me who I was. Neither did they ever identify themselves or tell me what crime I was accused of.

I now believe my abductors to have been Pakistani and United States intelligence agents. At the time, I thought they were local gangsters looking for handsome amounts of ransom money from foreigners. In truth, I was not far wrong. Musharraf unashamedly admits in his book to receiving millions of dollars from the US in bounty money for handing over terror suspects.

Unbeknownst to me, within days of my abduction my family sought assistance from the courts, issuing them with orders that I be immediately presented to the court or released. Despite my wife producing documentation, all the relevant government ministries replied with sworn affidavits claiming there was no record of me and that I was not in their custody. By the time they'd done that they were telling the truth: I'd been handed over to the US military, and was beginning my first days as a man with no legal rights, a period that would last for three years.

Throughout his book Musharraf clearly expresses disgust at the corruption in his country, which he claims he's tried to eradicate. He describes how appalled he was too at witnessing corporal punishment of people in Pakistan during previous regimes. His claim that he joined Bush's war on terror solely for the sake of national interest, coupled with his own desire to tackle extremism, may well be true.

Perhaps threats of being bombed "back to the stone age" did not persuade him to join the fight. But I will never forget what one of the Pakistani agents told me in Islamabad: "I know you're not wanted in this country for anything, and I don't know what the Americans want for you either. But listen son; if we don't hand you over to them they'll strike us so hard that we'll never be able to recover."

If, as Musharraf claims, he wants to bring his country into line with those who understand and apply common notions of decency and humanity under the law, how is it that he has ordered the abduction and arbitrary detention of so many? How can he surrender people to the US in the knowledge they will be denied human rights, abused and tortured? Is he really comfortable with the fact that, as Amnesty International recently said, the road to Guantánamo Bay starts in Pakistan?

Musharraf expressed indignation at reports of the desecration of the Qur'an at Guantànamo. But there was no such response to the hundreds of reported cases of abuse of human beings who were handed over by his government, under his orders.

The Pakistan government's primary role in kidnap and false imprisonment is clear and uncontested. But rather than boast of the numbers of suspects handed over to the US, without any extradition proceedings or due process, Musharraf should be ashamed - ashamed also that his European counterparts, and many other nations, have not deigned to behave in a similar way, even though they are equally staunch US allies. It is with the sound knowledge of Pakistan's human-rights record that the Bush administration has exploited another developing country leader who, when it comes to the rights of the individual, has little respect and even fewer morals.