Enforced disappearance case: UNHCR refuses to allow witness to record statement

AAG Punjab says it has been established that Masood Janjua was killed.

ISLAMABAD:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has refused to allow one witness, Imran Munir, to record his statement through video link in a case involving the July 2005 enforced disappearance of Masood Janjua, the Supreme Court was told on Monday.

Punjab’s Additional Advocate General Razaq A Mirza also told a three-judge bench – headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali – that Munir’s both statements were contradictory. It has already been established that Janjua was killed, he said, adding that “now no result is expected in this case”.

During the hearing when, Chairperson of the Defence of Human Rights (DHR) Amina Masood Janjua requested the bench to allow her to cross-examine the  army officers allegedly involved in Janjua’s enforced disappearance, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali said: “Do not push the court to a situation which leads to a confrontation between institutions.”

The bench also observed that after the refusal of the UNHCR’s director to permit Munir to record his statement through video link, there was no evidence to establish that the Janjua case still falls in the category of enforced disappearance.

According to his December 5, 2009 statement to the Joint Investigation Team, Munir claimed to have seen Janjua in the custody of ISI Brigadier Mansoor Saeed Sheikh in a cell near Zakria Masjid in Rawalpindi between July 28, 2006 and March 2007. Munir is living in a UNHCR camp in Sri Lanka as an asylum seeker.

Justice Mian Saqib said that if there was some ray of hope regarding the recovery of Janjua then the court could further examine this matter but now Munir himself refused to record his statement in this matter.

The court, however, suggested Amina pursue her case and cross-examine Gen Naeem and other army officers by filing an application before the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIED) also reminding that the court had already taken a lenient view in her case and that statements of all the witnesses he had cited had come on record of the court denying knowledge of the whereabouts of Janjua.

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