August 01, 2007	Wednesday	Rajab 16, 1428

RAWALPINDI, July 31: Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by Interior Ministry to probe into the Lal Masjid episode has not been cooperating with the Legal Aid Committee (LAC) formed by the two member bench of Supreme Court (SC) that took sou moto notice of the incident, the members of the legal committee revealed to Dawn.

The members of the LAC told this reporter that according to the directions of SC they were to supervise the investigations being done by the JIT that is headed by SP investigations Islamabad Ashfaq Ahmed who had time and again expressed his helplessness in providing complete details to the LAC. They said the JIT also included ISI, MI, IB, CID and Islamabad police officials.

The legal committee comprises ten lawyers that are Muhammad Ikram Chaudhry a senior SC lawyer, Sardar Asmatullah President Lahore High Court Bar Association Pindi chapter, Raja Khalid Ismail Abbasi President Rawalpindi District Bar Associatoin, Sajid Ilyas Bhatti, Syed Intizar Mehdi Shah, Malik Waheed Anjum, Toufique Asif, Sheikh Suleman and Shahbaz Ahmed Rajpoot. They are assisting the SC in the case of people missing, injured and arrested in the Lal Masjid operation.

Shahbaz Rajpoot said the two-member bench of the SC comprising Justice Muhammad Nawaz Abbasi and Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar in the last hearing on July 26 asked Deputy Commissioner Chaudhry Mohammad Ali to facilitate the meeting between the committee members and JIT. He said they had so far four meetings with the investigating team but no headway had been made as the investigators had expressed their ignorance about any progress as no information was being shared by intelligence agencies with police. He said these agencies were grilling the arrested people in Adiala jail.

Another member Toufique Asif said when they went to meet the JIT members on Tuesday there they were denied certain information by Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Shahid Nadeem Baloch who also expressed his helplessness at the hands of secret agencies. In the meeting two DSPs of

Secretariat and Abpara circles along with the concerned are SHOs. The lawyer said the SHO of women police station Islamabad was not included in Ethe investigating team

The lawyers reportedly objected to the absence of representatives of other investigating agencies and the present police official bluntly refused to share the information sought by the lawyers about their investigation in the operation. They said they would submit their report to SC on August 1 in this regard.