Haqqani urged to reveal lawyers’ expenses

Senate panel asks ambassador to the US to provide proof of payments made to lawyers who pleaded Dr Aafias case.

ISLAMABAD: A Senate panel on interior affairs has asked the country’s ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, to provide detailed proof of payments made to the lawyers who pleaded Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s case. Siddiqui was recently sentenced to 86 years in prison by an American court.

Addressing a press briefing on Friday, the chairman of the committee on interior, Senator Talha Mehmood, said that Haqqani has also been served a notice asking him to provide the breakup of the expenses incurred in the case.

“Pakistan spent two million dollars on American lawyers to plead Dr Aafia’s case but unfortunately this exercise proved useless when the court awarded her a life term,” he said.

Mehmood believes the solicitor general of Pakistan, Nasir Hussain Shah, was also not helpful in hiring the lawyers, alleging that Shah never attempted to talk to the prisoner in jail or inside the courtroom for better arguments. Mehmood also criticised Haqqani, saying that he did not play his due diplomatic role for Siddiqui’s repatriation to Pakistan.

The chairman said that committee would hold a meeting on November 4 to discuss various issues pertaining to missing persons, especially the role of Pakistani embassies in handling the cases of Pakistanis undergoing trial in the US.

According to the committee, some 10,000 Pakistanis have gone missing since 2002. The role of the embassies in locating these people has been unsatisfactory as they have failed to take up the issue of missing Pakistanis with the concerned countries, the chairman said.

The director general (America and Afghanistan) of the ministry of foreign affairs has been summoned to explain the role of the Foreign Office in this regard. The DG will be asked to provide the official records of the people who went missing, especially in Afghanistan.

Interior ministry secretary Qamar Zaman and  law and justice secretary Masood Chishti have also been summoned to explain the matter. They will provide details of expenditures incurred in tracing the people who had gone missing in Pakistan as well as abroad.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2010.