PESHAWAR: Agencies express ignorance in court about detentions
By Waseem Ahmad Shah
PESHAWAR, June 10: The Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence (MI) on Thursday expressed ignorance before the Peshawar High Court regarding the detention of two cousins who were allegedly arrested by the Pakistan army about three months ago.
A section officer of the Ministry of Defence, Major (Retd) Muhammad Anjum Rafi, appeared before a two-member bench comprising Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Ijaz Afzal, and informed that the ISI had categorically stated that they had neither arrested the detainees nor they were aware of their detention.
Similarly, he added that the MI had also refuted the arrest of the detainees. The bench fixed June 17 for the next hearing and summoned three cousins of the two detainees who were also arrested along with them but released later on.
The bench observed that it would be appropriate that they should appear and explain as to who had arrested them. Two habeas corpus petitions have been filed by an agriculture scientist Dr Abdur Rehman and his relative Advocate Muhammad Aslam Khan.
Dr Rehman, a former managing director of multinational agro- chemical company Monsanto Pakistan Agritech (Pvt) Ltd, claimed that his son Sohail Rehman, who had spent more than three years in Toronto (Canada) and is holding a "permanent resident card" of the Canadian Government, was picked by some officials in plain cloth and army uniform from his residence in D.I.Khan between the night of March 11 and 12 at about 3.00 a.m.
Advocate Muhammad Aslam has stated that his three nephews Kashif Jamal, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Farooq, who are also nephews of Dr Rehman, were picked from their residence at D.I.Khan the same night and since then their whereabouts were not known. Two of the detainees Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Farooq were released a few days ago.
When the section officer informed the court about the stance of ISI and MI, one of the petitioners, Muhammad Aslam, informed the court that they were eye witness to the whole account and they had seen about 200 army men in uniform who raided their residences and picked the detainees.
He added that the raiding contingent was fully armed and came in APCs (Armoured Personnel Carrier). The bench inquired whether the raiding team may have comprised fake army men. The petitioner replied that they were not fake as they were in large numbers and were in uniform.
The petitioners counsel, Lateef Afridi, said that the police and other agencies pickup innocent people and in the court they denied doing such things. The respondents in these petition are government of Pakistan through secretary ministry of defence, secretary ministry of interior, government of NWFP through secretary home, DI Khan district police officer and SHO police station DI Khan Cantt.
