‘I was in Bagram for 5 years and prisoners were tortured’

Statement of a Pakistani prisoner submitted in court as rejoinder.

LAHORE:

The statement of a Pakistani citizen, Kamil Shah, who was detained at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for five years, was submitted in the Lahore High Court on Monday. Shah said that US forces tortured prisoners held at the jail.

Barrister Sarah Bilal – the petitioner’s counsel in the plea seeking the release and repatriation of seven Pakistani citizens detained at Bagram – submitted Shah’s statement as a rejoinder to the report submitted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the court.

Bilal told the court that Shah had spent five years at Bagram and Pakistani authorities had not taken any notice of his case during that period.

The counsel said Shah’s statement demonstrated the ministry’s lack of interest in the state of Pakistanis illegal detained in foreign countries.

The court adjourned the hearing till January 20 filed a statement of after the government’s counsel sought time to comment on the rejoinder.

On the last hearing, the ministry had told the court that US Embassy in Kabul had been requested to allow ministry officials to visit Pakistani citizens detained at the Bagram Air Base. Justice Muhammad Khalid Mehmood Khan had expressed dissatisfaction over the reply. He remarked that the ministry, had merely repeated America’s line of argument and was doing nothing practical to aid the safe repatriation of the Pakistanis.

A non-profit firm Justice Project Pakistan filed the petition through its representative Sultana Noon.

Noon submitted that seven Pakistanis had been detained at Bagram since 2003 without being charged or tried.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2012.