24 August 2004	Tuesday	07 Rajab 1425

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PESHAWAR, Aug 23: A former member of the National Assembly of PML-N Haji Javed Ibrahim Paracha, accused by the federal interior minister of having links with militants, on Monday filed a pre-arrest bail petition in the Peshawar High Court.

A judge bench of the court will take up for preliminary hearing the petition on Tuesday. The petitioner asserted that neither he had links with any terrorist outfit nor he was ever involved in terrorist activities. He requested the court to allow him bail before arrest.

The petition was filed under sections 497 and 498 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Lawyers Abdul Lateef Afridi, Abdul Hakeem Kundi and others would represent the petitioner before the high court.

The petitioner stated that he belonged to a respectable family of district Kohat. Mr Paracha has annexed with the petition press clippings carrying statements of federal interior minister Faisal Saleh Hayat and information minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad.

The two ministers have accused Mr Paracha of having links with recently-arrested militants who were planning to blow up important installations. He stated that he was not sure whether he had been named in any FIR, but through press reports he had come to know about allegations.

Speaking at a press conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Monday the former MNA vowed that he would also file a defamation suit against the two ministers for damaging his reputation in public.

"I have no association with any Jihadi outfit and denounced terrorism," Mr Paracha said. But, Jihad was compulsory for every Muslim to expel Americans from the region, he added.

He said the two federal ministers were issuing "baseless statements" to malign political rivals and ensure their induction in the next cabinet.

He said the government had already accused Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam(F) of having links with Al Qaeda and other Jihadi organizations and now they had focussed their attention on the PML(N). He said he had been victimised for providing legal assistance to Arab prisoners in jails.