SHC asks govt to follow law while ordering detentions
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Feb 13: The Sindh High Court asked the provincial and federal governments on Tuesday to adhere to the provisions of the law while ordering preventive detention of citizens and other individuals.
The court was hearing habeas corpus petitions seeking recovery of ‘missing’ persons. Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan appeared in response to a court notice and submitted that according to information received from the United States, a detainee, Majid Khan, was in Guantanamo Bay prison. Pakistani authorities had nothing to do with his arrest or detention. It was not known how he landed at Guantanamo Bay. The detainee might have been arrested outside Pakistan.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Faisal Arab disposed of the petition with the direction to the foreign ministry to make all possible efforts for the release and well-being of Mr Khan. Petitioner Rabia Yaqub, the detainee’s wife, should be furnished quarterly reports in respect of the detainee as requested by her counsel Nisar A. Mujahid, the bench ordered.
About Maulana Alim Tariq, the AG said according to information received by him, he had been arrested by the Punjab police under Section 11 of the Anti-Terrorism Act. He was on a visit to Lahore when he was found in possession of highly objectionable material, including cassettes, aimed at instigating sectarian violence. The attorney-general produced a faxed copy of the FIR registered against the detainee. The bench asked the petitioner wife of the detainee to seek appropriate legal remedy should she so desire and disposed of her petition.
Another detainee, businessman Arif Kasmani, has returned home. His wife Javeria Kasmani’s petition was also disposed of by the bench.
The AG said another detainee, Syed Mumtaz Husain, was in detention in Islamabad under the Security of Pakistan Act, 1952. The petitioner’s counsel, Rasheed A. Razvi and Haider Imam Rizvi, said the detainee had arrived in Karachi from Dubai in June 2006 and the authorities had been denying his arrest. One of the agencies denied even his arrival in Pakistan. They requested that the material on the basis of which the detainee had been taken into custody should be produced in the court. The bench asked Deputy Attorney-General Akhtar Ali Mahmud to apprise it of the grounds of the detention and other relevant material on March 1, the next date of hearing.
The petitions seeking recovery of Munir A. Mengal, chief executive of a Dubai-based television channel; Jamhoori Watan Party vice-chief Salim Baloch; Ghulam Mohammad Baloch and others were adjourned till Feb 28 with the direction to the DAG to ascertain their whereabouts.
According to Mr Mengal’s counsel A.H. Lakho, unidentified intelligence agency personnel had offered to release him if his petitioner wife withdrew the petition and allegations contained therein.
