A co-accused in the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 was placed in detention for 90 days on Saturday, a day after the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) acquitted him.
Citing lack of evidence, ATC Judge Abdul Ghafoor Memon exonerated the 40-year-old Qari Hashim alias Arif on Friday.
However, the provincial prisons minister, Manzoor Wassan, said 24 hours later that “Hashim will remain imprisoned for 90 days under the Maintenance of Public Order ordinance”. Wassan made the remarks to the media after attending the passing out parade of jail police at Nara Prison.
Earlier, Hashim’s brother Khalid Imran claimed that despite the court’s order, the prison police were not releasing Qari. “All day long I waited outside the prison but the police didn’t say a word about his release,” he told reporters at the press club. Imran expressed concern that his brother may be nominated in some other criminal case.
According to Hashim’s counsel advocate Sher Muhammad Laghari, a contempt application has also been submitted in the ATC. He told The Express Tribune that the court has summoned the jail officials on Tuesday to explain why Hashim was not released despite the court’s clear orders.
Imran told The Express Tribune that he is also consulting his lawyer on ways to challenge the 90-day detention in the Sindh High Court.
Hashim’s family is settled in Bahawalpur. They claimed that Hashim had never travelled to Karachi. “His arrest and nomination in the Danial Pearl case is a drama.
The former military ruler Pervez Musharraf did it to get money and accolades from the US,” claims Imran.
According to Imran, the Supreme Court and the Sindh High Court have taken multiple notices of Hashim’s imprisonment without conviction, but to no avail. The only prosecution witness against Hashim, journalist Asif Mahfooz Qureshi, had testified in the court in April, 2013, that he did not recognise Hashim — whose voice test was also conducted.
Hashim, along with the Pearl’s murder convicts Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, Fahad Nasim, Shaikh Adil and Syed Salman Saqib, is imprisoned in Central Jail Hyderabad. According to the prisons minister, as many as 59 terrorism suspects and convicts are currently housed in the two jails in Hyderabad district.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 26th, 2014.
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They'll keep him imprisoned for another 6 years. They haven't ruined his life enough already.