LHC gives federal govt last chance to submit report

LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday gave one last chance to the federal government to submit the report of a review board looking into the extension of house arrest of Jamatud Dawa’s chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and his aides.

Saeed and his aides Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid, Qazi Kashif Hussain and Abdullah Ubaid, who have been under house arrest since January, had filed the petition at the high court challenging their detention.

While hearing the case on Thursday, the LHC bench accepted the request made by the federal government’s counsel and gave the government another two days to submit the review board’s decision. It had done the same of May 29.

On January 31, the Punjab government had placed Hafiz Saeed and four other party leaders under house arrest for 90 days after the interior ministry issued a letter.



According to the letter issued to the provincial government on January 29, JuD and its charity wing Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) both were placed on the government watch list and listed under the second schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

On January 27, the Ministry of Interior intimated that JuD and FIF are engaged in activities that could be prejudicial to peace and security, and are in violation of Pakistan’s obligations to the UN Security Council Resolution 1267.

When the first detention expired in April, the government extended it again for another 90 days allegedly without fulfilling legal formalities, which include a review board’s nod before extension.

In the petition challenging the house arrest, the party has included a number of JuD and FIF pamphlets to highlight their volunteer work in different parts of the country, including rescue work during the Mall Road suicide blast in February.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2017.