PESHAWAR: Judge asks Turkish embassy for interpreter
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, Aug 23: The special judge of narcotics Abdur Rehman Khan, has requested the Turkish embassy in Islamabad to arrange an interpreter for a Turkish lady facing trial for drug trafficking.
First secretary of Turkish embassy, Huseyin Emre Engin and two other officials visited the special court two days ago to meet the Turkish lady, Fatima Uskarat and the special judge.
The 28-year-old lady had already filed an application before the court through her counsel, requesting for arrangement of an interpreter as she could not understand English, Urdu or any other local language.
The judge informed the officials that the lady would be in a disadvantaged position if an interpreter was not provided to her.
The chairman, Voice of Prisoners, Noor Alam Khan, who is representing the lady contended before the court that it was the responsibility of the government or the Anti-Narcotics Force to arrange an interpreter for her. He questioned that how the ANF had interrogated her when they were not having facility of an interpreter. He added that he had tried his best but he could not find any Turkish speaking person in Peshawar.
The accused lady was arrested at the Peshawar airport on March 21, 2003. An inspector of the Airport Security Force, Irfan Khan, spotted her in the international departure section. On search of two bags carried by her, the official recovered 21 kilograms of heroin.
She was handed over to the Anti-Narcotics Force and a case was registered against her. The trial court indicted her on June 18.
Her counsel now intends to move an application for calculating percentage of different ingredients in the seized consignment.
He stated that the calculation of percentage would help in the lady as normally the banned ingredients like heroin was only 15 to 20 per cent of the seized stuff. He added that the quantity of the seized narcotics would be reduced manifold after the calculation and even if the lady was convicted she could only be sentenced for the actual quantity of heroin in the seized narcotics.
Meanwhile, the lady told her counsel in the presence of the embassy officials that she was innocent and the two bags, from which the narcotics was recovered, belonged to an African lady, Khadija, who is a member of an international gang of drug traffickers.
She added that this fact could be verified by checking the clothes inside those bags as those clothes were of a bulky and tall lady, which did not fit her.
While narrating her ordeal she claimed that she worked in a computer company and lived with her aunt in Istanbul. She added that her cousin, Gouksel, asked her to accompany her on a trip to Pakistan. She said that first she was taken to Lahore and then to Islamabad where her cousin met different persons.
Fatima claimed that she was not aware of the fact that her cousin belonged to group of traffickers. She added that in Islamabad she was introduced to Khadija and she was told that both of them would leave Pakistan from Peshawar. On the day of occurrence, she added that when the ASF official asked about the bags of Khadija she slipped away from the spot.
The lady told the official that the bags belonged to her friend but as he could not understand her language he arrested her. She added that she was not even having keys of the said two bags and the officials had to break the lock.
