Dinner dilemma: From roast chicken to roasting in a prison cell

Tale of trial, tribulation of two who decide to leave Pakistan.


Rizwan Shehzad September 24, 2014

ISLAMABAD: Muhammad Ali and Haseeb Tariq have decided to leave Pakistan after spending two days in an Adiala Jail cell made for captured militants, all for a crime they never committed.

They were detained on September 13 during a crackdown in Blue Area. Their only offence was eating dinner near Khyber Plaza at the time of the crackdown.

The victims – a software developer and a web developer– spoke openly about the terrible ordeal they had been through. From having roast chicken at a restaurant to tasteless prison food and using the toilet inside a jail cell – shared with eight other inmates — the experience was enough to make them wonder about leaving their homeland.

“The disheartening experiences have compelled me to leave Pakistan,” said Ali, still in disgust at the thought of the whitewashed walls and the ‘washroom’ — a knee-high boundary around a squat toilet with a nearby tap which also served as their only source of drink water. “How will my family learn I am here in this ‘special cell’ was the question I kept asking myself,” he said.

“One boy had just gone to buy medicine for his hospitalised mother and ended up with us. His ordeal made me cry,” Tariq said, adding that “he kept crying ‘God knows what happened to my mother’”.

While recalling the heart-wrenching experience, Tariq said that he wanted to leave the country because ‘if citizens in the capital were treated this way, what could be happening in other areas’.

Following their arrest by the Islamabad police, the two friends claimed that their cell phones — a Samsung S4 and an iPhone 4s — were snatched and they were taken to Kohsar Police Station in a prison van, where they spent the first night, along with 60 other people, under the open sky as the lockup was overloaded. “The police kept doing headcounts to confirm the number of people they had arrested,” they said.

On Sept 14, the police moved them to Adiala Jail and the number of prisoners reached 312, they said. They added that they were the first ones to get to the jail. After entering the jail, Ali said, they walked the length of a football pitch and through a small black gate, which was the entrance to a “fort-like building” that served as the ‘special jail.’ “We were told this section was especially built for Taliban prisoners,” said Ali.

They spent two days inside the cell before their families were able to bail them out at 4:30am on September 16.

“We just kept crying and throwing up,” said Ali. “What else one can do while sitting next to an overflowing toilet,” said Tariq.

“Whoever gave the orders to arrest people is responsible for everything,” they said, adding that their families kept crying till their release, and “no one can compensate the pain all of us went through.” They also made it clear that they were not affiliated with any political party.

Ali was lucky as he got his cell phone back after going through the turbulent practice of visiting police stations and offices. Tariq, however has still not been able to get his phone back. “The roast chicken ended up being having a higher price than I had imagined,” concluded Tariq.

How did we get here?

Kohsar Police Station House Officer Abdul Sattar Shah said that the police were simply following orders. He added that fault would lie with whoever gave such orders. “No one would believe, but the truth of the matter is that I spent almost Rs7,000 from my own pocket arranging food for people arrested during the crackdown,” he said.

Adiala Jail Superintendent Malik Mushtaq could not be reached for his comment. A telephone operator at Adiala Jail said that the superintendent would not be available for comment till the following day.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2014.

 

COMMENTS (1)

Nawaz Sharif | 9 years ago | Reply

Good for you guys! Pakistan is not for you dude. It is only for me and my heirs, and for those masses who can succumb to our rule

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