Out of the blue: Out of the frying pan, into the fire

Egyptian-origin Pakistani boy appears from nowhere 2 months after his disappearance, arrested for lack of identity.

ISLAMABAD:

Arrest of an Egyptian national on Thursday night unfolded more misery for the grief-stricken parents. He was taken into custody for inability to produce valid identity documents and within hours the arrested person was identified as the 22-year-old Abdullah who had gone missing two months ago from the same city.

The police said he was identified with the help of two identity documents including a Pakistani identity card and a letter issued by the Embassy of Egypt in his name recovered from his possession.

However, the Sabzi Mandi police claimed to have arrested Abdullah from near Sabzi Mandi (fruit and vegetable market) and booked him under foreigners’ act for not possessing a passport or any other travel document. Police said his identity card and embassy letter were also being verified for authenticity.

The man was produced before a court which sent him to jail on a judicial remand.

Abdullah Mohamed El-Sharkawi ‘disappeared’ on May 25, after he had gone for shopping near his hostel in the evening. An engineering student at the Air University in sector E-9, Abdullah went missing three days before his younger brother Ibrahim, 17.

His family lodged a complaint with the Margalla police only a day after his disappearance. They feared that he was detained by Pakistani security agencies. Days after the disappearance of the two brothers, their mother in a press conference said the younger Ibrahim had called her on a phone.

“He told me that he and his brother were being interrogated by men claiming to be members of special branch of the police at their family home in Attock district,” said a public statement of Amnesty International quoting Abdullah’s mother.

Two weeks after he went missing, the 17-year-old Ibrahim was found in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. His family found him being kept with ordinary prisoners despite his “juvenile” status. The jail authorities said he was transferred there by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on charges of illegal residency in Pakistan and resisting arrest.

All this time, the family did not hear anything about Abdullah. A case regarding his disappearance is also being heard by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Calling on the Pakistani authorities to investigate the alleged enforced disappearance of Abdullah, Amnesty International (AI) in its public statement on June 8, this year demanded the whereabouts of the boy to be revealed immediately.

The organisation also feared that the charges framed against his younger brother Ibrahim, who was being treated in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, were also baseless.

Sources in the police said Ibrahim was still in Adiala Jail, and he had to be deported to Egypt. “As soon as Abdullah is released, the two brothers will be sent to Egypt,” said the official.

Police officials said the two brothers were from a ‘Jihadi’ family and had come to Pakistan for Jihad. “Their activities were under radar particularly after May 2 Abbottabad raid,” said the official. He added that they will be deported to Egypt after necessary legal procedures.

Both the parents of these brothers are Pakistani nationals. Their father was in Egypt where he was under administrative detention until recently, according to the AI statement. And their mother was in Pakistan.

The family had been struggling to obtain Pakistani identity cards for years because their father was unable to travel to his homeland to sign the necessary documents.  The Peshawar High Court ruled in the family’s favour in January 2010, ordering the relevant authorities to issue Pakistani identity cards and passports to them.

But these documents have still not been provided to the brothers, leaving them vulnerable to abuse, said the AI statement.

Their father and older brother, Abdel Rahman, were both tortured in Pakistan before being rendered to Egypt in 1995 and 2006 respectively where they faced further torture.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2011.