KARACHI: LEA officials operating personal detention cells
By S. Raza Hassan
KARACHI, Nov 5: Individuals in police department have also been operating their own ‘private detention cells’ in addition to those being run by intelligence agencies in various parts of the city, sources told Dawn.
Among the agencies maintaining such detention cells, apparently for the purpose of investigation and interrogation, are the specialised units of police, like the Crime Investigation Department (CID) and Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC), which call such cells as ‘safe houses’.
The idea of establishing and maintaining the safe houses had been floated after judicial orders, passed on certain habeas corpus petitions, for raids on police lock-ups and known detention centres for the recovery of those kept there illegally.
The petitions had been filed by families or relatives of the suspects detained by the law-enforcement agencies without informing their families about their crime. Such families would presume them ‘missing’ before finding out that they had actually been picked up by police or some other law-enforcement agency.
A senior police officer requesting anonymity said that the intelligence agencies had resorted to establishing more cells for detaining people following court orders for raids on police lock-ups and known detention centres.
The sources said that a former inspector general of Sindh had allowed the CID to establish such detention centres and, for this purpose, some houses were purchased or rented by the department.
The permission to the CID had been given in the face of rising incidents of terrorism, as it was believed that the so-called ‘safe houses’ were essentially required to be maintained to facilitate the ‘war on terror’, a senior police official argued. However, the personnel associated with law-enforcement agencies are known to have taken advantage of the permission by resorting to establishing and operating their own private detention cells at secret places.
Apart from their known places of detention, the specialised units of CID and AVCC are now maintaining an unspecified number of detention centres, location of which is known only to the officials who are operating these safe houses, the sources said.
What kind of treatment is meted out to those kept in these centers is anybody’s guess as the intelligence sleuths or policemen don’t have to worry about any raid, even under a court order, for the recovery of the detainees.
In 2003, former TPO of Shah Faisal Town Asif Ejaz, acting upon the orders of the then CCPO, had carried out a raid on a similar safe house in Korangi and recovered two illegal detainees, who had been picked up from New Karachi.
It had transpired later that the former in-charge of Investigation, Zone II, inspector Mohammad Ali Rind, was operating this safe house in his personal capacity. Subsequent to an inquiry, Rind was dismissed from service, recalled a police official. A senior police official claimed that several inspectors, currently associated with the Anti-Dacoity and Robbery Cell (ADRC), are maintaining their private safe houses. Some of the areas where the inspectors have established such centres are Malir, Mehmoodabad and Bin Qasim, the official added.
The office of the ADRC, better known as the CIA Centre, has perhaps witnessed most of the raids carried out under court orders on habeas corpus petitions.
The latest of the raids was carried last month in which an illegal detainee was recovered from the CIA Centre by a magistrate. Subsequently, an FIR was registered at the Aziz Bhatti police station against Inspector Asghar Dahiri of the ADRC under section 342 (illegal confinement).
Advocate Shahadat Awan says that law has no provision for maintaining any cell or house to keep anyone in illegal confinement. “Keeping such detention centers has become a ‘normal’ practice by the law-enforcement agencies,” Mr Awan remarked.
In recent years, many people have been held incommunicado at undisclosed places and tortured or maltreated. Their families, worried about the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones, were subjected to harassment and threats for trying to locate them or seek any other information about their ‘going missing’.
“The court directives in habeas corpus petitions have been systematically undermined as state agents have refused to comply with court directions or have lied in court,” a recent report of the Amnesty International points out.
The clandestine nature of the arrest and detention of terror suspects makes it impossible to ascertain exactly how many people have been subjected to arbitrary detention or enforced disappearance. The independent non-governmental organisation, the Pak Institute for Peace Studies in May 2006 stated that over 1,000 people have been arrested in the ‘war on terror’ in Pakistan, according to the Amnesty International’s recent report on human rights conditions in Pakistan.
Fear is exacerbated by frustration, when state agencies consistently deny any knowledge of the whereabouts of the persons believed to have been seized. When the persons who are the main breadwinners of their respective families are subjected to enforced disappearance, this lays a heavy economic burden on their families, the Amnesty report maintains.
Responding to Dawn’s query, the Additional IG holding office of the city police chief, Tariq Jameel, said that keeping such a private facility is unlawful, I don’t have information about any such safe house being maintained by a police official. “However, if I would learn about any detention centre of this kind, I would certainly order not only departmental, but also legal action against the official operating such a centre,” he added.
