‘Watch where you’re going’: Prisons SP ordered to produce detained foreigner in court

She had been arrested for ‘loitering in a prohibited area’.

MULTAN:

Multan bench of the Lahore High Court on Monday directed the Dera Ghazi Khan Prisons superintendent to produce a German national, arrested on March 16, in court on Tuesday.

Kim Laura Schweer had filed an after-arrest bail petition through her counsel Advocate Rana Asif Saeed stating that she was being kept in police custody illegally.

She said she had a visit visa valid from January 31 to April 29. She said she had arrived in Pakistan on February 11 and the immigration officials had cleared her documents at the airport.

Schweer said she had visited several places in the country since she had arrived and had gone to DG Khan to visit the shrine of Sakhi Sarwar. She said she was arrested by the Sakhi Sarwar police on March 16 even though she had presented her travelling documents.

She was charged with loitering in a prohibited area without an NOC. A case was registered under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act 1946 (holding false documents) and she was sent to the district prison.

She filed a bail petition at the sessions court on March 19 and was granted bail but the prisons superintendent refused to release her. Advocate Saeed visited the prison but the superintendent told him to first obtain an NOC from the Home Department.

The court observed that the superintendent’s actions apparently violated human rights.

The superintendent was ordered to return Schweer’s travel documents, passport, ID card, credit cards and money and produce her in court on Tuesday.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2014.