PESHAWAR, June 28: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday dismissed a habeas corpus petition challenging the alleged illegal detention of a boy by an intelligence agency for more than a year on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda.

A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Ijazul Hassan observed that as the detainee was allegedly picked from the Khyber Agency, therefore the high court could not exercise any jurisdiction in this case.

The bench observed that Article 247 of the Constitution bars jurisdiction of the superior courts in relation to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The bench also observed that the petitioner failed to point out in whose custody the detainee was kept.

The political administration of Khyber Agency, from where the detainee was allegedly picked along with some other persons including a foreigner, disowned a letter of a tehsildar of Jamrud tehsil wherein it was claimed that the detainee was arrested by them and then handed over to an intelligence agency.

The additional advocate general, Pir Liaqat, contended that the political agent had disowned that letter and termed it fake.

The petition was filed by an inhabitant of Jamrud, Khyber Agency, Abdul Qudoos, stating that his brother Adnan Khan, who was a student of class X in the Government High School Jamrud, was arrested along with some other persons by the administration on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda on Feb 12, 2004, and was later handed over to an intelligence agency.

The petitioner’s counsel Habibur Rehman Afridi argued that according to the available record the detainee was in the custody of an intelligence agency for more than a year. He contended that the continuous detention of the detainee was unconstitutional as he was neither tried nor produced before any court of the law.

He claimed that in a communication of the tehsildar it was mentioned that the detainee was handed over to an intelligence agency. He stated that the story was also carried by various newspapers about the arrest of the detainee.

The deputy attorney general, Salahuddin Khan, representing the federal government, stated that the intelligence agencies had already expressed ignorance regarding the detention of the detainee.