At a joint Press conference by the Army and the BSF at the 15 Corps headquarters today, the three local Hizbollah militants and the Harkat militant captured alive during an operation at village Pathwari, Nowgam, yesterday, were presented before media persons.

Miskeen, hailing from the Lipa Valley of PoK, categorically denounced the path of the gun and said he had made a grievous mistake by taking up arms. ``My advice to the youth of PoK is not to get misled and take to militancy,'' said Miskeen, who hails from an impoverished family in the Lipa valley. Miskeen's cousin, Abu Bakr, of the Harkat, was also killed in the encounter at Pathwari. ``The situation in PoK is very oppressive as ISI agents pick up boys from the bazaar and force them to becomemilitants,'' he said.

Persistent queries as to why he had surrendered did not elicit a clear explanation. ``I surrendered because of the Ihalaat (circumstances)''. Did not his training stand him in good stead once the bullets began to fly around the cordoned house? Miskeen claimed that he had received no more that a mere three-day training in the AK rifle at a training camp in Lipa Valley.

Giving details of the camps, Miskeen revealed that Maulana Fazlul Rehman, the Amir (leader) of one faction of the Jamait-e-Ulma-i-Islam and patron of Harkat camps on the Pakistani-Afghan border where the Taliban are also taught, often visited the training camps in PoK.

Their faces wrapped in cloth to conceal their identity, one of the two local militants of the Hizbollah told The Indian Express that he along with two other recruits from Karnah were imprisoned for two years in a jail in Muzzafarabad after being branded as ``Indian agents''.

``I was freed, trained and sent to wage war against theIndian Army and kill informers by the ISI. But I would have surrendered because my heart was not in the fighting and was worried about the future of my family,'' the Hizbollah militant said.

The Hizbollah militant said criminals from the Kela jail in Muzzafarabad were being released before time and trained as militants to wage war in Jammu and Kashmir.

Manzoor Ahmad Dar, a Hizbollah militant from the Hajin area, said that he had been given Rs 13,000 by ISI agents to become a militant. ``I went across to PoK in 1994 but broke my hand and could not receive training. I worked as a sewing hand in a shop at the Idgah lane, Muzzafarabad for two years,'' he said.