Qurtaba Chowk lawyers: Judge dismisses illegal detention plea

Petitioners fail to prove they were forced to stay at Kot Lakhpat Jail.

LAHORE:

An additional district and sessions judge on Monday dismissed a petition from two lawyers claiming they were kept in illegal detention at Kot Lakhpat Jail on the day CIA contractor Raymond Davis was released.

Judge Musharraf Hassan Sumra ruled that the petitioners had not established that the offence of illegal detention had taken place.

According to the petition by advocates Asad Manzoor Butt and Noman Attique, they had entered the jail on March 16 to meet their clients – the families of Faizan Haider and Faheem Shamshad, the two men that Davis shot dead at Qurtaba Chowk. But, they said, the jail authorities did not allow them to meet their clients, nor to leave the jail so they could move the courts. They said that the jail record showed that the two lawyers had entered the jail at 12 noon, following which they were not allowed to leave for four hours. They sought cases against the jail superintendent and additional superintendent.

The additional superintendent of Kot Lakhpat jail had submitted that the jail record only showed what time the lawyers had entered the jail, not that they had been detained there. He said that they had stayed there by choice.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2011.