Bagram Prisoners: Ministry of Interior given one last chance to reply

‘Pakistan bring its citizens back before the US pulls out of Afghanistan’.

LAHORE:

Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday gave the Ministry of Interior Affairs one last chance to submit its reply to a petition seeking the recovery of some Pakistani citizens in Bagram Prison.

Counsel for the petitioner said that the government had made no arrangements to recover Pakistanis detained in Bagram Prison. She said the US wanted to shut down the Bagram Airbase before it pulled out of Afghanistan. Therefore the government should make arrangements to recover them at the earliest, otherwise they would be shifted to another prison.



She said several Pakistanis who had been released from Bagram Prison were still in the custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies. A law officer asked the court to give the interior ministry a last chance to reply. The court told him to bring the reply in two days. The petition has been filed by the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non profit organisation, lobbying for the release of Pakistani citizens from Bagram. The JPP has sought directions for the release and return of 25 Pakistani citizens detained at the Bagram Prison. It has said these citizens have been detained at the prison without trial since 2003. It alleged that they were abducted from Pakistan and moved to the infamous US prison in Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd, 2014.