Soft Targets: Safe houses put citizens at risk

Offices of crime and intelligence agencies, often dubbed 'sensitive' buildings, are a hazard to residential areas.

KARACHI:

On March 8 last year, the residents of K-Block in Lahore’s Model Town went about their normal routine. A powerful blast ripped through the area around 8am, targeting the interrogation office of the Special Intelligence Unit (SIU).

Exactly a year later, Faisalabad’s residents woke up to the first bomb blast in the city, after extremists targeted the office of the an Intelligence agency.

On November 11 last year, Karachiites living on opposite ends of the city felt a jolt, and saw their windows and doors rattle. It wasn’t an earthquake, but the shockwaves of a massive truck bomb at the Crime Investigation Department (CID) headquarters in Civil Lines. Houses in the neighbouring Police Quarters caved in and the windows of nearby buildings shattered from the impact.

Despite the evident threat to the CID, the new office is being rebuilt at its previous location, a source of concern for families of police officers who still live in the houses that were damaged by the blast. “Couldn’t they have rebuilt this somewhere else?” asked the wife of an officer. “This will be a (constant source of ) threat to us.”

Lahore’s residents say they are powerless to do anything. “The Model Town Residents Association doesn’t want to do anything,” said FA*, a resident of Model Town. “Who do we complain to?” Residents of Model Town’s F Block had protested about the location of an SIU office in the area. Their fears were confirmed when it was attacked on March 11, 2008.

According to Jamil Yusuf, the former chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, the only recourse citizens have is to file a lawsuit, like they can over any commercial activity taking place in residential areas. “Of course, who would file a lawsuit against the agencies?”

FA said she had often seen the SIU office in K Block. “It was barricaded and I first thought the security was for the mosque run by the Quran Academy’s Dr Israr Ahmed, which was next door. Then my driver told me that ‘yeh khufia logon ka ghar hai’’ (This is the house of intelligence personnel). It was a single-storey, pre-Partition house. That entire house collapsed in the blast and is completely levelled now.”

“I was asleep when the blast happened,” she recalled. “I woke up to a loud noise and the house shaking. Our windows were shattered, but there was a building in the nearby commercial area where girls worked late at night as well. I could hear them continuously screaming because every single window in that building had shattered.”

Another hazard to residential areas is the offices of crime and intelligence agencies, often dubbed ‘sensitive’ buildings.

Roads leading to all ‘sensitive’ buildings are blocked off, another inconvenience to citizens. During a January 28 session of the National Assembly, Interior Minister Rehman Malik listed 21 streets in Islamabad that have been closed to citizens since March 2008. This includes routes leading to the FIA, IB and Special Branch offices.

WS’ family had lived near the FIA building in Lahore whichwas attacked twice, causing extensive damage to nearby houses.

However, other residents do not consider the presence of ‘sensitive’ buildings to be an issue. “There is 24-hour security near the FIA building now,” WS said. “Some people are happy about this.”

But attacks also lead to a dip in property rates. “The property next to the FIA building has been on sale for three years now,” WS said. “It’s a commercial property and no one wants to pay those rates.”

A safe house is defined as ‘a house in a secret location, used by spies or criminals in hiding’, but over the years, the term has come to encompass everything from a detention centre to an interrogation cell.

An appeal posted on the Asian Human Rights Commission website listed, among several others, alleged ‘safe houses’ in Saddar and Landhi in Karachi, at a mountain near the Quli Camp Cantonment in Quetta and at the Dera Bugti gas field in Balochistan.

According to a Dawn report, Justice Javed Iqbal reportedly said in the Supreme Court recently that an office of the intelligence agencies was located near the judges’ enclosure in Islamabad, but it was a guest house and not a ‘torture chamber’.

Jamil Yusuf says a line must be drawn between the different offices and disagrees that there are ‘safe houses’ in Karachi. “Those buildings are actually functioning offices for agencies. There’s a difference, since high-profile criminals are held in very high-tech places and these are usually linked to an existing building, such as the Military Intelligence office.”

However, Yusuf believes that there is a “moral responsibility” security agencies have to not have offices in residential areas. “An FIA office has opened up in PECHS Block 6. Now this is a residential area and there are schools here. These agencies do have the support of people   we saw in Lahore how people laid flowers at the spot where security officials had been killed   and they have all our sympathies. Given the present trend (of attacks on their offices), why put the general public at risk? The government has enough land and they can either build these offices away from residential areas or these cells should be moved in with police stations, etc.The onus rests with the agencies.”

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals

Published in The Express Tribune, April 02^nd, 2011.