KARACHI:
The 'preventive detention' of a suspect freed from jail after being acquitted in the Daniel Pearl murder case has been challenged in the Sindh High Court (SHC).
Qari Hashim was acquitted by an anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad on October 23 'due to lack of evidence.'
Law enforcers had detained Hashim in 2005 and held him at the Hyderabad prison as the trial proceeded at a snail's pace - it was shifted from Karachi to Hyderabad due to a transfer of the suspect because of security threats.
Detention
On Friday, his family filed a petition with the high court, pleading to declare Hashim's detention as a 'violation of basic human rights' and order the provincial authorities to set him free. His brother, Khalid Anwar, who filed the petition, named the provincial home secretary and the prison police chief as the respondent.
The petitioner argued that his brother was cleared of the false allegations following a formal acquittal from the court but the authorities had detained him. He has reportedly been detained in jail for 90 days under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO).
Anwar argued that his brother's detention, following a formal acquittal from the court of law, was a violation of the provisions of the Constitution, which guarantee free movement to every citizen of the country. The court was pleaded to declare the detention illegal and order the home and prison authorities to set him free immediately.
Case history
Daniel Pearl was the South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal. He went missing from Karachi in January 2002 and was killed in May of the same year. Following Pearl's death, the same year, Ahmed Omer Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and murder, was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi. His appeal challenging the sentence is still pending at the SHC.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2014.
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