PESHAWAR, March 20: The Peshawar High Court disposed of here on Thursday five identical writ petitions challenging the detention of five Arab employees of a Kuwaiti NGO after the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) expressed ignorance about their arrest.

A two-member bench, comprising Justice Malik Hamid Saeed and Justice Qazi Ahsanullah Qureshi, observed that when the whereabouts of the alleged detainees were not known and none of the respondents, including the ISI, police and the Ministry of Defence, accept responsibility of their arrest these petitions had become infructuous.

At the very outset of the proceedings, the Deputy Attorney-General, Mr Salahuddin Khan, informed the court that the ISI director-general had filed comments and had expressed ignorance about any raid conducted by his agency.

The Ministry of Defence has already expressed ignorance regarding the whereabouts of the detainees, stating that they were neither picked by the Pakistan army nor any other agency.

The petitions were filed by senior advocate Ikram Chaudhry on behalf of the relatives of the five detainees — Hamad Ali, Mohammad Al Ghazali, Hassan Khalil, Al-Rasheed and Jalib Mohammad. They are employees of a Kuwaiti NGO, Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, one of the seven organisations put on terrorist list by the US state department last year.

The petitioners alleged that the detainees were picked by a joint raiding team, comprising personnel of the FBI, the ISI and the Pakistan army, from their respective residences here.

Mr Ikram Chaudhry contended that the detainees were picked more than nine months back and now the ISI claimed that it was not aware about their arrest, which proved the mala fide intentions on its part. He argued that if they were not in custody of these agencies, then they might be with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The bench observed that the FBI was not in their jurisdiction and they could not issue any notice to it.

Mr Ikram Chaudhry argued that the detainees were residing in Pakistan and it was the responsibility of the government to take care of their life and property. He added that the ISI was fully aware of the whereabouts of the detainees.

The respondents in these petitions are: the Federation of Pakistan through General Pervez Musharraf, the Ministry of Defence through secretary defence, the Ministry of Interior through secretary information, Inspector General of Police, NWFP, and the director-general of the ISI.

It is worth mentioning that according to news reports the detainees had already been handed over to the US government and shifted to the Camp X-Ray in Cuba.