Missing persons case: Bring the 7 detained men before court, officials told

SC issues notices to attorney general, provincial advocate general and the lawyer representing ISI and MI.

ISLAMABAD:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed officials to present seven men detained in Parachinar before the court on May 10. It also issued notices to Attorney General of Pakistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Advocate General and the lawyer representing Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence (MI).

A three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, took exception to a fresh application that alleged that families had lost contact with seven surviving missing persons namely Mazharul Haq, Shafiqur Rehman, Muhammad Shafiq, Dr Niaz Ahmed, Abdul Majid, Gulroze and Abdul Basit.

It was in May 2010 that 11 men after being acquitted in four different terrorism cases from a trial court had allegedly gone missing from outside Adiala Jail.

The bench also directed the authorities to submit relevant records of any trial proceedings of these persons at the next date of hearing.

Advocate Tariq Asad, who was representing the families of missing persons, moved the application that stated that these men had been detained in Kohat Jail, from where they had been relocated to detention centres in Parachinar in Kurram Agency.

The application stated that it was on May 2, 2013 that a person, who was later identified as a tehsildar (a revenue administrative officer), came to the prisoners and informed them that two of them had been sentenced to five years and five others to 14 years in jail. Later, on May 4, the men were shifted to an undisclosed location, the application said.

The lawyer informed the court that since the matter had been pending in the apex court since 2010, four men out of the 11 had died while in custody of the intelligence agencies, adding that the authorities had convicted these men and sentenced them to different jail terms without any trial.

However, Advocate Raja Irshad, who represented the ISI and the MI, informed the SC that these men had been involved in different armed attacks on army’s convoys in Fata and would be tried under army laws.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2013.