A malleable truth: PHC seeks report of detainee held in Malakand

Directs special secretary home to provide information on previously missing person who ended up dead

PESHAWAR:

The Peshawar High Court directed officials of the internment centre in Malakand to provide a complete report on a detainee allegedly picked by security agencies around three years ago from Mardan.

On Thursday, the division bench of Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Malik Manzoor Hussain was told by Hussan Zaiba, the mother of Shah Wali and Naseem Shah, that her sons were picked by security forces from the Bakhshali village of Mardan district.

She claimed officials from the internment centre in Kohat called her around a month ago, asking her to retrieve the body of Shah Wali. Her son was a student of Class-VIII, but had to quit studying due for financial reasons. Zaiba now fears for her second son and told the court she had only met him once in the last three years at the Malakand internment centre.

The court ordered officials of the internment centre to provide a complete report of the detainee.

Still missing

The court also took up the case of Civil Aviation Authority employee Muhammad Sajid Mushtaq who was working at Multan airport and was allegedly picked up by security forces and intelligence agencies on September 6, 2010.

Sajid’s father Muhammad Mushtaq said he approached the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, but a delayed date for the hearing prompted him to file a petition in the PHC.

The court issued notices to the ministries of interior and defence to respond to
the petition.

Another death

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs department was also told to submit a report on a previously missing person, Musafar, who later died.

Special Secretary Home and Tribal Affairs Syed Alamgir Shah appeared before the court and said Musafar was dead while the whereabouts of another missing person, Arif, were unknown.

The PHC ordered the special secretary to submit a report on Musafar’s death within 10 days, adding this was the last chance given to the authorities in this case.

A division bench of Justice Malik Manzoor Hussain and Justice Ikramullah Khan was told on the last hearing of the case that Musafar and Arif were picked by intelligence agencies with the help of local police from Haji Camp on July 25, 2011.

The families of both missing persons claimed the police picked up Musafar, a truck driver and cleaner, Arif, despite the fact that they had no connections with militant organisations.

The petition stated the family of Musafar was informed on June 24, 2014 that he was being held at the internment centre in Kohat. However, on July 20, the man’s body was handed over to the family without specifying a cause of death.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 26^th, 2014.