KARACHI, Feb 26: Justice Syed Zawwar Hussain Jaffery of the Sindh High Court reserved order on Wednesday on a bail petition moved by a Pakistani facing extradition proceedings for allegedly molesting a woman in the Michigan state of USA.
Haris Hasan was born in Karachi in 1980 but moved to the US with his parents and acquired the US citizenship. He returned to Pakistan early in 2002, renounced his US citizenship and joined a college for higher education.
While in the US, he was accused of driving Clarissa Kritzman and her boyfriend, Jeremiah Kelly, in a taxi to a river-bank near Detroit, Michigan, beating up Jeremiah and raping Clarissa seven times in three hours. The alleged incident occurred on Jan 20, 2002, but the complaint was lodged on Feb 7, 2002.
Haris came back to Pakistan 10 days after the incident and the US embassy in Islamabad sought his extradition for a trial. He was detained for months under the MPO before being committed to a judicial magistrate of Karachi South by the federal government in June 2002 for a preliminary inquiry into the charges against him under Section 7 of the Extradition Act, 1972.
Following a petition for the release of Haris by his father on the ground that under the Extradition Act, he should either have been found prima facie guilty or discharged and freed within two months, a Sindh High Court division bench remanded the magistrate’s inquiry report for being contradictory. It directed that the inquiry be completed after obtaining a rejoinder from the accused and conclusive findings given by the magistrate to the federal government by the end of 2000.
The inquiry is still pending and Haris moved the high court for bail. The application was heard by Justice Zawwar Hussain Jaffery on Wednesday.
Appearing for the federal government, standing counsel S. Mahmood A. Rizvi submitted that bail could be granted only after the completion of the inquiry, which was being delayed by the petitioner’s failure to file a rejoinder despite a high court order. He said the government would decide on extradition or otherwise in the light of the inquiry report.
Representing the accused, Barrister Azizullah Shaikh submitted that there was no case against him and he should be released under the provisions of the Extradition Act. It was not humanly possible to forcibly commit sexual intercourse seven times within a span of three hours. The allegations, he said, were part of a campaign of hatred launched in the US against Muslims, including Pakistanis.
