February 18, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 29, 1428

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HYDERABAD, Feb 17: The relatives of imprisoned leaders of Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) announced on Saturday they would challenge in high court the Sindh Home Department’s notification about holding the imprisoned leaders’ trial within jail premises.

Ms. Saima, wife of Muzaffar Bhutto, Ms. Zulekhan, wife of Nawaz Zounr, and Ms. Anwar Khatoon, mother of Sattar Hakro, said at a news conference at the press club that police had now admitted the arrest of JSMM leaders Sattar Hakro, Nawaz Khan Zounr, Muzaffar Bhutto, Sikandar Soomro, Zulfiqar Khaskheli, Ahmed Khan Teeno and Mehram Mallah after 14 months of their enforced disappearance.

They said that the home department’s notification about ‘inside trial’ had no justification whatsoever and alleged that the authorities were reluctant to hold their trials in open court because they had been implicated in false cases.

They cast doubt on the impartiality of judgement passed by an ‘inside trial’ and appealed to the United Nations, Amnesty International, human rights organisations, political parties and social welfare organisations to take notice of the unjustifiable notification.

CLOSED SCHOOLS: Nazim of union council-2 of Qasimabad taluka Mehboob Abro on Saturday charged that the district government and the EDO of education had done nothing so far to reopen the 33 primary schools in the rural taluka, which had been closed for many years.

Mr Abro told a news conference at the press club that the EDO education was so helpless that he could not even order the transfer of a peon. The 33 primary schools in rural taluka had been converted into cattle pens, which ridiculed the district government’s claim of achieving 100 per cent literacy rate by 2015 under the millennium development goals.

Mr Abro stressed that people did not want parks, flyovers, carpeted roads or streetlights they wanted to see the closed schools reopened and called upon the authorities to reopen the schools without further delay.

Mohammad Ilyas Solangi, Ghulamullah Chang Advocate, Mohammad Din Chang and Wadero Allah Bachayo Solangi were also present at the press conference.