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| April 12, 2007 | Thursday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 23, 1428 |
SC moved to bring agencies under ambit of law
ISLAMABAD, April 11: The PPP-backed civil society organisation, People’s Democratic Institute (PDI), has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking its intercession to bring state agencies under the ambit of law.
The petition was filed by the director of the institute and former senator Farhatullah Babar who on Tuesday had requested the court to allow him to become a party during the hearing of two identical petitions filed by the HRCP and the Defence and Human Rights Committee for the recovery of missing persons.
The court had allowed him to file a petition with the Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court. Mr Babar also seeks to examine whether citizens were kidnapped by agencies for collecting bounties rather than for consideration of national security or war on terror.
The petition says that intelligence agencies be controlled, guided and held accountable to political masters responsible for the defence of the country, both internal and external.
It seeks directions for setting up of institutional framework for the control and guidance of intelligence agencies to stop them from setting up their own agendas and themselves defining parameters of their activities and areas of operations.
The petition says parliament should pass a law to guide and control the working of the intelligence agencies and subject them to scrutiny by relevant parliamentary committees.
The petitioner seeks setting up of a commission comprising members of parliament, judges and human rights activists to look into the issues of disappeared person, effect recovery of the missing, investigate whether some people had been kidnapped allegedly for bounty collection and to identify individuals involved in such disappearances. To emphasise the need for bringing to justice those involved in mysterious disappearances.
The petition pointed out that even after the suo motu notice taken by the Supreme Court citizens continue to disappear mysteriously. He stated that there were reasonable suspicions that citizens and non-citizens might have actually been kidnapped by security agencies ostensibly for fighting the war on terror but actually for the sake of collecting bounty.—Reporter
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