Supreme Court. PHOTO: AFP/FILE
The federal government on Tuesday shared two lists with the Supreme Court – one identifying the secret internment centres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and the other carrying the names of persons in charge of these centres.
The government also informed the court that 516 people were being held in these centres.
Additional Attorney General (AAG) Tariq Nawaz Khokar, on behalf of the federation, submitted the list of the missing persons detained in the internment centres.
Justice Jawwad said the list was provided after warnings. “Now, we will see who is the commandant of these centres.”
The three-judge SC bench headed by Justice Jawwad S Khawaja also asked the AAG to provide the details of the cases related to missing persons pending in the Supreme Court, high and lower courts and before the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIED).
According to the list provided by the attorney general office, the internment centres in K-P include two sub jails in Palthom and Fizagat areas of Swat, one in Malakand, district jails of Timergara, Lakki Marwat and Kohat and Frontier Corps forts in Chitral, Drosh, Mirkhani and Timergara.
Rizwan Shah is in charge of internment centre in Malakand, Ayub Bacha of Palthom, Yousaf Gul of Fizagat, Sabz Ali of Lakki Marwat and Muhammad Irsahd is in charge of the internment centre in Kohat.
During the proceedings, Justice Jawwad warned that there should be no laxity of law. He stated that when the federal government did not make any progress, the Supreme Court had to issue orders. Justice Khilji asked the deputy attorney general what else was preventing the missing persons from meeting their relatives.
Justice Jawwad said that disappearance of even a person was a serious matter. He said that most of the people in the list seemed to be from Punjab and K-P. The honourable judge said: “We will tally the names in the lists with the Amna Masood Janjua list and the CIED report.”
At the start of the hearing, Attorney General Munir A Malik informed that the defence secretary and the advocates general of all provinces had extended full support for the recovery of missing persons.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 10th, 2013.
COMMENTS (11)
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no its not fair to justify that blame it upon the british who drew line wrongly upon which area is gonna go to which country namely, west and east pakisntan, burma and china ...alll these problems are becasue of them and now the balme game .... were they even not even bothered to regonize the social science of each border to draw a line??? or even its futuristic implications??? we were diveded uoon being a thrid class in-scientific colony even though our human and natural resource were used sooo bluntly... when nobody bothered to how to rule upon us or as an excuse of scienctific governance techniques then why should we complain now??? when nehru can do to amalgamate other princely states to amalgamate into republic of india then why pakistan is taking more than a half century to do it ???? what happened to their social scientific technequies of dialogue and negociations which are healthy both economically and social scientifically ...
@Pakistani: please Pakistani understand the science of economics of demand and supply in that commercial show biz ... its about selling emotions upon the the current events of those times... we dont have to retrogate to them ...iv had muslim friends who have gone thru the same stage ... but being born and brought up in tough societies we can easily digest that and not to forget about our economic and social aims...to travel abroad... so we all must practice peace and ignorance towards the negativity and all and i hate Pakistan tribune to not to publish my comments that frequently which could have given some logic to this pathetic third class passive ignorance.
These detention centres are illegal, yes. But are we capable of prosecuting terrorists the legal way? Looks like the courts - which have so far proven completely unable to prosecute terrorists - are now making sure even the agencies cannot imprison them.
oh come on people check out the root cause of formation of the colonies into recognized nations... and their land structure, social structure, and pre and post political structure.... where is the logical thinking? ..and why such a debate? that even after more than a half century has gone we still have problems with the structure of Pakistan ???? what was the regionalism ??? and all now we know that the British knew it all, as they were not religion suckers, their society evolved above the religion and into the science and cleverness in the times of queen elizabeth 1 itself .... with the formation of church of england to end the corruption in the name of religion ... they had logistics and we were religion suckers and still are...labels mean nothing without money and in this case KP is all about theocratic social science, which should be obsolete by now in the age of rocket science, but not. Hence the british during the demarcation of the borders knew it and hence they still did it, just like what they did with the rohinga area in burma, that instead of giving it to bangladesh they gave it to burma, and now the population suffered... we all know the facts !!!!
Has anyone seen the bollywood film New York? How the hero and others are picked up by security forces, tortured and when freed, these souls turn back to haunt them. The same is going to happen if you release these people now. Most of them will resort to terrorism and the country will be burning.
We should appreciate supreme court for protecting our rights and taking notice of any thing unconstitutional. How it would be if you are suspected become a missing person though you might be innocent. there is law and we should abide to it.
All those who are crying hoarse are in a way abetting terrorists. The law enforcing agencies should release them so that these terrorists carry out more henious acts of terror
Why give their names? They are just doing their jobs. And when they arrest the terrorists, they prefer to hide their faces and names. This is just stupid.
Quantanamo bay looks like decent place.
It is not Palthom, but Paithom (Pakistan Austrian Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management).
blame it upon British who asked them to add such controversial areas to Pakistan ???