Stowaway case: Police seek to pass on inquiry to other agency

Investigators say airport authorities refusing to hand over video evidence.

LAHORE:

Cantonment police investigators have asked senior officials to transfer an inquiry into the whereabouts of missing teenager Ali Jamshed to the Crimes Investigation Agency (CIA) or an intelligence agency because that would make the airport authorities more likely to cooperate with the investigation, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Jamshed was last seen by his family in the company of his friend Qasim Siddique, who died on January 13 after he fell from a Dubai-bound plane on which he had stowed aboard.

Siddique is believed to have snuck onto the airport runway through a perimeter fence and then hidden in the space where the plane’s landing gear is stored during flight. Shortly after the plane took off, his body fell and landed on the roof of a house in Al Faisal Colony. Jamshed has been missing since.

Jamshed Ahmed, the missing boy’s father, lodged an abduction case at Baghbanpura police station on January 19 under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code. He told The Express Tribune that he had been contacted only once by airport authorities concerning his son, and that was on January 22. He said that he had been told that a police team including Cantt SP (Investigation) Amin Bukhari, CIA SP Umer Virk and SSP (Investigation) Abdul Razzaq Cheema was conducting the investigation, but he had little hope that his son would be found. He said that his next step would be to move the courts.

In a letter to high-ups, Cantonment investigation police officials wrote that the airport authorities had denied them information and evidence from the day of the incident.

They had been requested to hand over to the police video footage from a camera on the airport fence from the day of the incident; a list of temporary employees at the airport; a list of duty officers around the airplane; a list of Airport Security Force officials at posts number 3 and 4 of the airport; and a list of ASF sector in-charge officials. They had tried to contact airport authorities several times seeking the information, but to no avail. The letter advised that the inquiry be moved to “special agencies” or the CIA.

Earlier, Syed Zahid Hussain, who is in charge of investigations at North Cantt police station, had told The Tribune that the airport authorities had only given the police CCTV footage from a camera some distance from the apron that yielded no useful pictures.

He said the police had not been given recordings of conversations between flight control and the plane, but had been given transcripts of the recordings.

The Defence Ministry and intelligence agencies were also said to be investigating how the boy(s) had managed to sneak past airport security and looking for Jamshed, but five months after the incident, the government has not made their findings, if there are any, available to the public.

Sources in airport security said that the investigation would never be revealed, “on the pretext of national security,” because the authorities concerned wanted to protect Chief Airport Staff Officer Col (r) Farrukh Kiyani, who was working on an extended contract.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2011.