No organisation will be declared unlawful under US or India pressure: Nisar

Nisar offers to give in-camera briefing on madrassah reforms

ISLAMABAD: Amidst opposition parties’ boycott of the National Assembly session against the government's taxation policy, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar took the lower house into confidence regarding the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP).

He said there are 60 banned organisations under Pakistan's law, and 177 is the number of organisations proscribed by the UN.

“However, we will not declare any organisation unlawful under pressure of the US or India,” Nisar said.

"Yes we are a signatory of the UN charter, and we will devise a policy on this topic; so far, we only added 10 organisations in our watch list proscribed by the UN. There is confusion on this presently, we will bring more clarity in the coming days,” the interior minister said.

“A cell is working on this issue in the interior ministry; we will bring all proscribed organisations in our schedule.”

Citing security and diplomatic sensitivities, he offered to give an in-camera briefing to lawmakers on madrassah reforms. However, he claimed that there is propaganda against these seminaries' activities.

The minister claimed that improvement has been made by making the intelligence system coordinated and effective.

“Complete peace would only be restored in the country when we are able to eliminate the leadership of terrorists who managed to escape from Pakistan's border area adjacent to Afghanistan,” he said.

Nisar said the interior ministry has referred 20 cases to Pakistan Army for trial, but after scrutiny by Judge Advocate General Branch - army's legal division, 12 cases have been identified for trial in these courts.

Military courts would only take up the cases of war criminals, while the other cases of terrorism would be tried in anti-terrorism courts as per the normal legal procedure.

“We will not let free those who fought with us and committed war crimes,” the minister said.

“They have committed genocide while attacking our children, minorities and innocent people,” Nisar added.

Nisar confessed that there are differences on these military courts, but the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl and the Jamaat-e-Islami have no differences on the NAP.

“We are in state of war and war criminals cannot be tried in normal courts; Germany had also set up war tribunals after World War Two,” the interior minister said.

He said military courts believe in justice, and the accused would be given an opportunity to engage legal counsel.

“For the first time in Pakistan, through an effective civilian and military intelligence network, we foiled terror plans; one of them was against the Hazara community, however, a few perpetrators of this plan managed to escape," Nisar said.

Nisar said out of 100 million unverified sims, 30 million have been verified during the period of a month.