Taken: FIA prosecutor’s alleged killer ‘picked up’

Petitioner claims his son and two others were taken by intelligence officials

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court issued notices on Wednesday to the ministries of interior and defence, and the IGP with directions to depute a responsible official in the case of a lawyer and two others who were allegedly picked up by armed staffers from an intelligence agency.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui issued notices to the respondents and directed them to appoint an official by June 26.

Mumtaz Anwar Abbasi had approached the IHC saying that his son, Advocate Hammad Dadan, along with three friends identified as Abdullah Umar, Ammar Dadan, and Ahmad, went to Masjid Imam Abu Daud near Pims for Taraweeh prayers on June 20.

At around 11pm, the petitioner, through his counsel Mirza Shahzad Akbar, said he received a call from his son asking him to come help him as his car was hit near a private school. Abbai said that when he reached the spot, Ahmad and the people present there, which included a number of policemen, informed him that Hammad, Ammar and Abdullah were taken away by armed men from an intelligence agency.

Abdullah is reportedly a Hammad’s cousin and was allegedly involved in the killing of Federal Investigation Agency Special Prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, the petitioner’s counsel informed The Express Tribune.

The prosecutor was gunned down on May 3, 2013, while going to a hearing at an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi in connection with the Benazir Bhutto murder case. Umar was arrested as a suspect in the murder of the prosecutor, but was granted bail on medical grounds by an ATC in July last year.

Akbar said the petitioner was informed that an SUV and a number of other vehicles started chasing Hammad’s car when they left the mosque. When Hammad tried to lose the tail, a Toyota Vigo hit his car from behind and it turned turtle in the process.  Subsequently, military officials in plain clothes dragged the three men out of the car and took them away in separate vehicles, Akbar said. Akram Cheema, a sub-inspector from a nearby police station, informed the petitioner that the stranded Vigo belonged to the ‘agency’ and it would be prudent not to pursue the issue.

The petitioner went to the Industrial Area Police Station, but the police did not fully entertain his request, saying they could only register a case against unidentified persons, rather than the intelligence agency.

The legal community has expressed shock and concern over the incident, Akbar said, adding that if the defenders of the law are subject to such arbitrary treatment at the hand of state institutions, what justice could an ordinary citizen expect.

The men have been picked up by the officials of agencies without telling them or their family any reason for doing so, he said, adding the abductors did not bother to produce them before any court as required by law. It is an infringement of the men’s rights under Article 10 of the Constitution, he said.

The counsel prayed the court to direct the respondents to produce the abducted men before the court. He further prayed to direct the authorities to register criminal charges against those responsible for the abduction and subsequent detention.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 25^th, 2015.