Missing Persons' case

Ali_Syed · January 23, 2012, 4:21am

re: Missing Persons’ case

Here’s what Haqqanis wife and Zardari’s media advisor is saying:

I fled Pakistan for fear of being kidnapped by ISI: Ispahani

LONDON:** President Asif Ali Zardari’s media adviser Farahnaz Ispahani has alleged that she ran away from Pakistan fearing Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) might kidnap her to force her husband, Husain Haqqani, to sign a confession and implicate the president in the memogate scandal.

Farahnaz Ispahani’s allegations will shock Pakistan’s military establishment and many in the government and the opposition. Farahnaz said this while talking to a British journalist, Christina Lamb, who claimed in her Sunday Times article that Pakistan’s military is “steadily silencing opponents” and conducting a soft coup.

**Christina Lamb, a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times, who filed story on Pakistan from Washington, is banned from entering Pakistan after being deported from the country in 2001.

Lamb wrote that the memogate scandal involving Husain Haqqani, who is facing trial for treason, was “trumped up”.

Lamb wrote that Haqqani’s life is in danger and his wife Farahnaz Ispahani has fled to Washington amid fears that “ISI might kidnap her to force her husband to sign a confession and implicate the president.”

**“What we’re seeing is the systematic killing or silencing of anyone who stands up to the institutionalisation of a militarised Islamist state, who advocates positive relations with the West or stands up for tolerance,” **Ispahani told The Sunday Times. “I’m scared, even the government can’t even protect itself.”

Lamb also wrote about the latest murder of the radio journalist Mukarram Khan Atif and alleged his murder was “part of a deliberate campaign by the country’s military intelligence arm (ISI) and militant groups to silence moderate voices.”

She wrote the Voice of America journalist had been receiving death threats from militants who did not like his reporting and demanded space on his radio programmes to voice their own hateful rhetoric.

She quoted Bob Dietz, Asia Director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, as saying: “We’re definitely seeing a deliberate attempt to silence people. Scores of Pakistani journalists have asked for asylum, wanting us to arrange fellowships. Frankly, we’re overwhelmed by it.”

She also mentioned the murder of journalist Saleem Shahzad and mused that journalist Najam Sethi and his wife Jugnu Mohsin were “forced to move to Washington for a couple of months after several years of severe intimidation.”

**“In the old days you’d get picked up, thrown into prison for a couple of months, maybe roughed up, then let out. But now it’s a whole different ball game - there’s no second chance,” she quoted Sethi as saying. She quoted a Baloch journalist Malik Siraj Akbar, who has won asylum in America, as saying that he didn’t want to leave Pakistan but didn’t “want to become a martyr”.
**

Sachaydino · January 23, 2012, 10:29pm

re: Missing Persons' case

Thanks Ali_Syed for sharing this video. Both advocate and the anchor could not control their emotions and burst in to tears. I hope every one on this forum visit this thread and see the video you have posted. If members here can not do anything, atleast they should condemn this brutal act of army. It is hoped that CJ will shift his drection form stupid memogate thing to such cases. I also hope that he will get hold of these killers.

Ali_Syed · January 23, 2012, 11:00pm

re: Missing Persons' case

Some people would have the justification that he deserved to be killed being member of taleban/alqaeda, I think that yes he should have been punished after passing him through the judicial system, if there are some problems in the judicial system they need to be improved. By carrying out reckless, arrogant steps like these the army is propagating anarchy instead of stemming it.

Sachaydino · January 23, 2012, 11:05pm

re: Missing Persons' case

But ATC and High Court in past had found them not guilty of any charge, why some people assume what you are saying above? Assumption is not a proof. Even if they were involved in such activity, army had no right to torture them and then killed them.

Anwer_Pasha · January 23, 2012, 11:12pm

re: Missing Persons’ case

This is just new
But like our old stories
Rights suffer under army power grab in Pakistan: report
http://news.google.com.pk/news/tbn/IPOWVrOXAfwJPakistanToday.com.pk
Pakistan Daily Times‎ - 34 minutes ago

Ali_Syed · January 23, 2012, 11:12pm

re: Missing Persons' case

Well they were arrested under the suspicion of being involved in the Ghq attack, I don't know how the army couldnt prove that in the courts. Once they were freed the army picked them up as part of the ever growing list of missing persons. They were never proven guilty, but let's for a second assume that they were terrorists even then they should have had a fair trial. These people were abducted under suspicion of being Involved in the attack, whereas isi lackeys Malik Ishaq who has killed thousands of people keep getting released with no reaction from the same intelligence agencies.

Ali_Syed · January 24, 2012, 10:04am

re: Missing Persons’ case

Keeping in view the enforced disappearances, killing and dumping people (enemies), it makes sense after reading this article.http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/pers-s16.shtml

Washington’s “good war”

Death squads, disappearances and torture in Pakistan

16 September 2009

As the Obama administration prepares a major escalation of the so-called AfPak war, reports from Pakistan’s Swat Valley, near Afghanistan’s eastern border, provide a gruesome indication of the kind of war that the Pentagon and its local allies are waging.

**While touted by Obama and his supporters as the “good war,” there is mounting evidence that the Pentagon and the CIA are engaged in a war against the population of the region involving death squads, disappearances and torture.
**
**The Pakistani army sent 20,000 troops into Swat, part of the country’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), last April to wage war against ethnic Pashtun Islamist movements (routinely described as the Pakistani Taliban) that have supported fellow Pashtuns across the border who are resisting the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan.
**
**This offensive, which was carried out on the direct and highly public insistence of US envoy Richard Holbrooke and senior American military officers during repeated trips to Islamabad, unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe. In what amounted to a massive exercise in collective punishment, many civilians were killed or wounded and some 2.5 million people were driven from their homes.
**
Now, the Pakistani military continues to occupy the area, carrying out a reign of terror in which individuals identified as opponents of the government and the US occupation across the border are being picked up and tortured to death.

**According to a report published September 15 in the New York Times,with the military occupation of the Swat Valley “a new campaign of fear has taken hold, with scores, perhaps hundreds, of bodies dumped on the streets in what human rights advocates and local residents say is the work of the military.”
**
**While the Pakistani military has denied responsibility for this wave of killings—blaming them on civilians seeking revenge against the Islamists—the Timesquotes local residents, politicians and human rights workers as blaming the army. They point, the article states, to “the scale of the retaliation, the similarities in the way that many of the victims have been tortured and the systematic nature of the deaths and disappearances in areas that the military firmly controls.”
**
**In addition to bearing marks of brutal torture, many of the bodies are discovered with their hands tied behind their backs and with a bullet in the back of the neck. In some cases corpses have been beheaded.
**
On September 1, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn quoted government officials as saying that 251 bodies had been found dumped along the roadside in the Swat Valley since July. On August 27, the newspaper reported that 51 bodies had been found in the area in the space of just 24 hours.

***Dawn *has also reported the discovery of a number of mass graves containing victims of the military and referred to local residents who had “witnessed the crude and inhuman lumping together of the living and the dead.”
**
**The Times cites the case of Akhtar Ali, 28, arrested by the military at his electrical repair shop on September 1. While military officials repeatedly told his family that he would be released, four days later his corpse was dumped on their doorstep, bearing cigarette burns and with nails hammered into his flesh. “There was no place on his body not tortured,” his family said in a petition seeking justice.
**
American officials have praised the Pakistani military for its campaign in the Swat Valley, with US Ambassador Anne Patterson visiting Mingora, Swat’s largest town, last week to congratulate the army.
**
Now US officials are pressing the Pakistani government to replicate this bloody campaign in South Waziristan. A similar offensive is already underway in the Khyber Agency, site of the Khyber Pass, a key route for supplies to the US occupation force in Afghanistan. UN officials report that 100,000 people have been displaced by the attack.
**
Washington stands behind the atrocities being carried out against the Pakistani people. It is funding the Pakistani military operations, with some $2.5 billion in overt military aid this fiscal year. Meanwhile, CIA drone attacks continue, having claimed nearly 600 Pakistani victims over the past year, the majority of them civilians.
**There is every reason to suspect that the wave of disappearances, torture and death squad assassinations in Pakistan is also “made in the USA.”
**
Before becoming the US commander in Afghanistan, **Gen. Stanley McChrystal headed the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secret special operations unit that investigative journalist Seymour Hersh described as an “executive assassination wing.”
**
US special forces “trainers” are operating on Pakistani soil, instructing Pakistani forces in the kind of tactics favored by JSOC—tactics that yield the bound and battered bodies dumped in the streets of Swat.
**These tactics fit a long pattern of US counterinsurgency warfare, from Operation Phoenix in Vietnam to the US-backed death squads that terrorized the population of El Salvador in the 1980s.
**
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen warned again Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the military will almost certainly seek an increase in troop levels over the 70,000 American soldiers and Marines that are to be deployed in Afghanistan by the end of this year.

Citing diplomatic sources, Dawn reported that Gen. McChrystal is calling for a shift in the war’s focus to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.

**Having lost control of most of Afghanistan after nearly eight years of US occupation, the Pentagon is preparing to launch a new wave of bloodletting and terror against the population on both sides of the border in the hope of breaking popular resistance.
**
The administration of Barack Obama, elected on a wave of antiwar sentiment, is already implicated in war crimes that rival those carried out by his predecessor. Support for the war within the US has declined to levels approaching those reached over Iraq, with the latest CNN poll showing 58 percent of Americans opposing the US occupation of Afghanistan and only 39 percent supporting it.

Driven by the interests of the US ruling elite, the escalation of this dirty war, together with the escalating assault on jobs and living standards at home, is creating the conditions for the emergence of a mass political movement of working people against the Obama administration and the profit system which is the driving force of imperialist war.
Bill Van Auken

Ali_Syed · January 24, 2012, 10:37am

re: Missing Persons' case

When Imran Khan or others say that by starting the war in FATA, Pakistan itself helped create TTP its right to an extent. Try reading the present situation with a law called FCR which is present in FATA for the past 100 years (from British period). According to that law if a person commits crime the whole tribe is considered responsible for that? Does that make sense is some civilized country in the 21st century?

When Musharraf asked the Mehsuds and Mohmands to hand over the foreign elements, and the tribe couldnt do that the whole tribes were considered as the enemies and punished. Consider if a person of our extended families commit a crime and the whole family is considered to be the culprit. This was the basis of formation of TTP, as the army pushed whole tribes in the opposite camps and then had to undertake operations to wrest those areas from unwanted elements. The army attacked, the properties and people of whole tribes, and then raised some tribal lashkars (from other tribes) to help them counter the 'enemies'. There would be some unwanted elements in those areas, no doubt but we have made whole tribes as our enemies due to our policies.

Hence this mess in which we are in, the enmities that are present in various tribes living in the same area I dont know what the results would be when we officially win the war in FATA.

Ali_Syed · January 24, 2012, 11:05am

re: Missing Persons’ case

As far as FCR is concerned the law still exists but some changes to that were made the previous year, we need to get rid of FCR, end this stupid war, and try to bring FATA in the mainstream.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/17/short-steps-long-road-ahead.html

Short steps, long road ahead
**The ordinance passed by President Asif Ali Zardari concerning the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) last week is a substantial step in extending the equal protection of the laws to all of Pakistan’s citizens.

****This ordinance is significant when one looks to the status quo of Pakistan’s leadership, who has never amended the law controlling Fata, which was created by the British Raj to subjugate and divide the region’s residents. Despite the positive progress made through this ordinance, Fata still lacks constitutional protection and the Supreme Court of Pakistan continues to lack jurisdiction to enforce the rights of its citizens. Therefore, this is a small step in the long road ahead for the constitutional recognition of Fata.

****Both the Prime Minister and President have criticised the Federal Crimes Regulation (FCR) which controls the Tribal areas and levies outdated and sometimes unjust punishments to the people. The regulation dates back to 1901 and allows for collective punishment to be carried out against a whole tribe for the transgression of one of its members. The punishments levied on an entire tribe ranges from beatings to imprisonment to the confiscation of property. Individuals could be indefinitely held without any sort of judicial hearing to determine their guilt for years. And most devastating of all was that the citizens could not appeal the often harsh decisions of their courts to any higher authority.

**In the Sumunder v. State case, Supreme Court Judge A.R. Cornelius stated that the provisions of the FCR were “obnoxious to all recognised modern principles governing the dispensation of justice.” In fact, when examined in light of the Constitution of Pakistan, these FCR practices violate article 10, which guarantees a citizen’s right to a fair trial while prohibiting arbitrary detention. However, under Article 247, the Constitution does not apply to the citizens of Fata and the Supreme Court is not permitted to exercise jurisdiction to defend the constitutional rights of the tribal people.This week’s ordinance amends the FCR to require the government to conduct a judicial hearing within 24 hours of arresting a suspect and prohibits the practice of collective punishment on women and children under the age of 16. The presidential amendment also requires just compensation for citizens whose property has been wrongly seized by the government, and requires compensation to be paid to those falsely accused of crimes. Most importantly, a two-tiered appellate board has been set up for Fata residents to appeal decisions by their courts. However, the judgments of this appellate board are not reviewable by any other court, including the Supreme Court.

While there are some positive provisions in this Ordinance, this law is not the endpoint of the process to recognise Fata and its citizens by President Zardari. In fact, in June of 2011, President Zardari signed another bill concerning FATA which should be remembered in the evaluation of the current ordinance. The Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulation of 2011 applies to Fata exclusively and allows for the military to intern suspects arbitrarily, and permits the military to occupy any citizen’s land without compensation. Further, the regulation allows a court to punish a suspect solely based on the testimony of one army officer, which violates Pakistan’s evidentiary law.

Thus, when one looks to the loopholes left in the FCR amendments package alongside this regulation, one can see that the residents of Fata face a long battle ahead in fully realising their constitutional rights. The ordinance by the president continues to allow for collective punishment to be exercised on all males above the age of 16, which is “obnoxious” to the protections of the Constitution, in the words of Judge Cornelius. Further, the President did not incorporate a wholesale extension of constitutional rights to the people of Fata, and did not allow jurisdiction for the Supreme Court. This lack of protection paired with a regulation allowing for military operations, may allow for unconstitutional detentions and trials for the people of Fata without any constitutional remedy in the coming years.

The executive branch, under President Zardari, has taken a step in giving some rights to the Fata region, but the nation’s parliamentarians should realise that there is much work remaining. The most enduring action that Parliament could take in applying the equal protection of the law to all its citizens would be to amend Article 247, such that the Constitution applies to the region and the Supreme Court be allowed jurisdiction to hear cases. Such an amendment may be unlikely considering the history of the Parliament on this issue. However, one can hope that Zardari’s ordinance allowing rights to fair trial and appeal starts a conversation that may eventually bring about Parliamentary support for a fully recognition of constitutional protections for tribal citizens.

*The writer holds a Juris Doctorate in the US and is a researcher on comparative law and international law issues.*

Ali_Syed · January 25, 2012, 10:52am

re: Missing Persons’ case

[The Last Story: Hayatullah Khan - Committee to Protect Journalists

The Last Story: Hayatullah Khan

](The Last Story: Hayatullah Khan - Committee to Protect Journalists)By Bob Dietz
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

**In his last assignment in the lawless tribal region of North Waziristan, Hayatullah Khan filed photos and a story indicating a U.S.-made Hellfire missile had struck a home in the town of Miran Shah, killing senior al-Qaeda figure Hamza Rabia. The story, which appeared in the widely read Urdu-language daily Ausaf , and the pictures, distributed by the European Pressphoto Agency, contradicted the Pakistani government’s official explanation that Rabia had died in a blast caused by explosives located in the house.
**
The next day, December 5, 2005, five gunmen ran Khan’s car off the road, abducting the journalist as his younger brother Haseenullah watched helplessly. Six months passed amid a swirl of rumors about Khan’s fate before the phone rang at his family’s home at 4:40 p.m. on June 16. A Pakistani intelligence officer identifying himself as Major Kamal said Khan’s body had been dumped in Miran Shah’s marketplace. With that, the officer said, his responsibility to the family had ended.

Khan, 32, was a well-connected journalist, fixer, and entrepreneur who had also started a school and a small inn. He was no stranger to trouble in Pakistan’s troubled Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the border region adjoining southeastern Afghanistan where the Taliban is fighting NATO forces. **In 2002, U.S. forces in Afghanistan’s Paktika province detained Khan for four days. Over the years, he was threatened by virtually every regional faction: Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence division (ISI), the military, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda.

Freelance writer Eliza Griswold worked with Khan several times and said he invariably knew what was afoot “in one of the most clandestine corners of the world.**” Some journalists could be put off by Khan’s comparatively high fixer rates, but Griswold said that “he followed the story, no matter the personal cost.”

In November 2005, a few weeks before disappearing, Khan met a military intelligence major in Miran Shah and was warned “to leave his profession or leave Waziristan or accept the government’s political policies,” another brother, Ihsanullah, recalled. “On the night of November 27,” he told CPJ, “Hayatullah passed his will to his tribe and explicitly stated, ‘If I am kidnapped or get killed, the government agencies will be responsible.’”

Whatever role, if any, the government played in Khan’s killing, it appeared to engage in a cruel misinformation campaign during his six-month disappearance.** As Khan’s family careened between government sources in search of information, the official account morphed from one month to the next: Khan was in government custody, soon to be released; Khan had been abducted by “miscreants;” he had been taken by Waziristan mujahedeen; he had been flown to the military base at Rawalpindi and then detained in Kohat air base. Ihsanullah Khan said Zaheer ul Islam, a regional government agent, summoned family members on May 15 to say that the journalist was at the U.S.-run Bagram air base in Afghanistan. The situation, ul Islam said, was out of his hands.
**
Ihsanullah Khan angrily pressed ul Islam for a better response. The political agent then “promised Hayat’s children that their father will come back to them alive and safe,” Khan told CPJ. “We happily returned from Miran Shah to our house in Mirali. I told the good news to my mother, sister-in-law, and sisters who performed some rituals and told our relatives that Hayat would be back.”

Interviewed by CPJ, ul Islam acknowledged meeting the Khan family but denied making such a statement.

When his body turned up, Hayatullah Khan was thin, dirty, and in the same clothes he wore when he was abducted. Ihsanullah Khan said his family, too frightened to go to the marketplace to retrieve the body, saw it only later when it was prepared for burial. The family was told by hospital workers that Khan had suffered five or six bullet wounds and that one hand had been manacled in handcuffs typically used by the ISI. Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, dismissed the reported presence of the handcuffs as circumstantial and said the cuffs could have been planted to incriminate the government. No autopsy was performed.

An investigation led by High Court Justice Mohammed Reza Khan has been completed, but the results have not been made public. Khan’s family said they were not interviewed by the judge or other investigators. Northwest Frontier Gov. Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai told CPJ that North Waziristan was not secure enough to risk exposing a judicial figure to kidnapping or death. Of the eight journalists murdered in Pakistan since 2002, only the case of the American Daniel Pearl has been investigated to any result or degree of competence.

Pakistani officials have pledged to review all of the cases, but journalists are skeptical. And one, Sailab Mehsud, president of the Tribal Union of Journalists, was blunt in assessing the government’s role in the slaying: “We know that the government had a hand in this. A message has been sent that we should stop doing our work. For us, the post-Hayat period will only be more dangerous.”

Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, led a mission to Pakistan in July.

Ali_Syed · January 25, 2012, 11:32am

re: Missing Persons’ case

Government wont do anything, its good at least SC is trying to do something for the country now, hats off to them! When the supporters of the government are asked about this they start pointing towards the past 60 years of history vis a vis military civilian relations. By the way the judges are also civilians! If they can take a stand why cant the government too, as they are ultimately responsible to what ever is happening to the public under their nose?

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-32422-SC-approves-plea-in-missing-persons-case

[FONT=Georgia, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif]Missing persons: SC issues notices to AG, ministry of defence

ISLAMABAD: **The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday issued notices to Attorney General of Pakistan and Ministry of Defence over the petition filed against mysterious killing of four missing persons, Geo News reported Wednesday.

A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary conducted the initial hearing of the petition filed by Advocate Tariq Asad against the mysterious killing of four, out of eleven missing persons (former prisoners of Adiyala jail, Rawalpindi).**

The court approved the petition for hearing and issued notices to the respondents. The hearing was adjourned till Jan 30.

Sachaydino · January 25, 2012, 9:42pm

re: Missing Persons’ case

Looks like CJ has seen my post, though the heading has been changed without my consent:) Government should provide all possible information about this brutal act of army. I hope atleast rank of a general will go to gallows for committing henious crime.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/25/sc-issues-notices-to-isi-mi-chiefs.html

SC issue notices to ISI, MI chiefs

**ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted appeals for hearing against killing of four prisoners in custody of security agencies, DawnNews reported

A five-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry took up the matter here today.

The chief justice termed the killings in custody of security agencies as serious and directed the government to submit its report after investigating the matter.

The court also issued notices to the chiefs of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) and the secretary defence.

Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq told the bench that he would submit his report on the next hearing of the case.**

Ali_Syed · January 26, 2012, 1:26am

re: Missing Persons' case

Now the heading is more appropriate and vast to include all kinds of crimes covered by the security apparatus. :)

you never know who reads these forums as you will sometimes see some politician talking about the same things that we discuss in these forums, internet has become very powerful these days.

Ali_Syed · January 28, 2012, 3:12pm

re: Missing Persons’ case

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\28\story_28-1-2012_pg3_1

EDITORIAL:** Custodial deaths
**
**Eleven prisoners went missing in 2010 from Adiala Jail. They were suspected terrorists who were arrested on charges of an attack on former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, attacks on Kamra and Hamza Camps, GHQ, and possession of suicide jackets, but were acquitted by an Anti-Terrorist Court. However, they were not released. The Lahore High Court (LHC) then ordered their release but they were allegedly picked up by the intelligence agencies following their release. There was speculation that they were ‘handed over’ to the intelligence agencies by the Adiala Jail authorities. When the Supreme Court (SC) directed the Punjab chief secretary to recover them, the apex court was told by the Punjab Home Secretary that he was helpless. **This was in 2010.

**In 2011, a senior law officer of the GHQ admitted that the prisoners were in their custody. The advocate general explained that they were formally arrested in April 2011 and a case had been registered against them under the Pakistan Army Act, 1952. Apparently, four of the 11 abducted prisoners have died in custody. **A missing persons petition has been filed in this regard. The SC issued notices to the defence secretary, ISI and MI director generals (DGs) and judge advocate general (JAG) of the GHQ.

In its World Report 2012, Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed out that due to pressure from the military, the civilian government in Pakistan has failed to hold those responsible for serious abuses accountable in 2011. Asia director at HRW Brad Adams said: “From Karachi to Quetta, Pakistan is teetering on the edge of becoming a military-run Potemkin democracy.” Pakistan is a national security state where fundamental human rights are violated every day. The death of four prisoners in the custody of the intelligence agencies reflects a pattern and points at a clear policy choice.
**
Extrajudicial killings are not allowed in any civilised society but in Pakistan it has become the norm. Even though the alleged accused were charged with very serious crimes, custodial deaths cannot and must not be tolerated. What does it say about our justice system, society, state and its polity? It is good to see that the SC has made a daring move by issuing notices to the most powerful agencies in the country. Custodial death is murder.**

The intelligence agencies must explain how the four prisoners died and what the fate of the other seven would be. **The immunity with which our military and intelligence agencies operate all over the country is a disgrace and is indeed criminal. The military’s kill and dump policy in Balochistan is out there for all to see. Thousands of Baloch are missing and hundreds of them have been found dead in recent years. Are we living in a democratic state or a fascist one? After several decades of direct military rule and especially after nine years of the Musharraf regime, a democratically elected government coming to power should have made some difference in this regard. Unfortunately, rights abuses continue to take place all over Pakistan.
**
**We cannot turn a blind eye to the military’s barbaric policies. Fundamental human rights and due process of law are enshrined in our constitution. The military cannot make a mockery of the law and constitution as is its wont. **

abidfarooq · January 28, 2012, 6:28pm

THE BLATANT CRIMES OF INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES IN PAKISTAN

زیرحراست ہلاکتیں،آئی ایس آئی، ایم آئی کونوٹس

پریم کورٹ نے اڈیالہ جیل سے رہائی کے بعد لاپتہ ہونے والے گیارہ افراد میں سے چار افراد کی ہلاکت سے متعلق وفاقی حکومت، سیکرٹری دفاع، ڈی جی آئی ایس آئی اور ملٹری انٹیلیجنس کے سربراہ کو نوٹس جاری کرتے ہوئے اُن سے جواب طلب کرلیا ہے۔

ان افراد کو راولپنڈی کی انسداد دہشت گردی کی عدالت نے سنہ دوہزار نو میں عدم ثبوت کی بنا پر رہا کردیا تھا تاہم رہائی کے فوری بعد خفیہ اداروں کے اہلکار اُنہیں مبینہ طور پر زبردستی اپنے ساتھ نامعلوم مقام پر لے گئے تھے۔
سپریم کورٹ میں جب یہ معاملہ پیش ہوا تو پہلے خفیہ ادارے اس سے لاتعلقی کا اظہار کر رہے تھے تاہم سپریم کورٹ نے جب انٹرسروسز انٹیلیجنس کے سربراہ کو نوٹس جاری کیا تو پھر اُن کے وکیل راجہ ارشاد نے نو دسمبر سنہ دوہزار دس میں عدالت کو بتایا کہ یہ افراد فوج کی تحویل میں ہیں اور یہ افراد جی ایچ کیو کے علاوہ فوج کی دیگر تنصیبات پر حملوں میں ملوث ہیں اور اُنہیں آرمی ایکٹ کے تحت گرفتار کیا گیا ہے۔

چیف جسٹس افتخار محمد چوہدری کی سربراہی میں سپریم کورٹ کے تین رکنی بینچ نے ان ہلاکتوں سے متعلق دائر کی جانے والی درخواست کی ابتدائی سماعت کی تو درخواست گُزار طارق اسد نے عدالت میں اُن چار افراد کی موبائل کیمرے سے لی گئی ویڈیو تصاویر بھی پیش کیں جنہیں اُن کے بقول تشدد اور بھوکا رکھ کر ہلاک کیا گیا۔ عدالت نے اٹارنی جنرل سے کہا کہ یہ انتہائی اہم معاملہ ہے اور اس کو نظر انداز نہیں کیا جاسکتا۔

عدالت کا کہنا تھا کہ اب ان افراد کو قانون کے تحت گرفتار کیا گیا تو پھر اُن کے خلاف مقدمات چلنے چاہیں تھے۔

طارق اسد نے عدالت کو بتایا کہ ان گیارہ افراد میں سے تین افراد کو گُزشتہ برس تحویل کے دوران قتل کرنے کے بعد اُن کی لاشیں پشاور میں سڑک کے کنارے پھینک دی گئی تھیں جبکہ عبدالصبور کو اس ماہ کی بیس تاریخ کو قتل کرنے کے بعد اُس کی لاش بھی پشاور میں سڑک کے کنارے پھینک دی گئی تھی۔

طارق اسد کے مطابق ان فراد کی لاشیں سڑک پر پھیکنے کے بعد خفیہ ایجنسوں کے اہلکار اُن کے رشتہ داروں کو فون کرتے ہیں کہ وہ آکر اُن کی لاشیں لے جائیں۔ اُنہوں نے کہا کہ ڈاکٹروں نے بھی ان افراد کی موت کو غیر طبعی قرار دیا ہے۔

اٹارنی جنرل مولوی انوار الحق نے عدالت کو بتایا کہ وہ چونکہ چوبیس جنوری کو متنازع میمو کی تحقیقات کرنے والے کمیشن کے سامنے پیش ہوئے اس لیے وہ اس معاملے کو نہیں دیکھ سکے لہذا اُنہیں کچھ مہلت دی جائے جس پر عدالت نے اُنہیں تیس جنوری تک جواب داخل کروانے کا حکم دیا ہے۔

X2 · January 28, 2012, 6:35pm