May 30, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 24, 1429

PESHAWAR, May 29: The detention of 49 jirga members of Kurram Agency under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) was challenged before the Peshawar High Court on Thursday.

A joint writ petition was filed under Article 199 of the Constitution by the detained tribal elders including Captain (retired) Ali Akber, former political agent Laiq Hussain, an educationist Fida Hussain, Nasir Ali Bangash and others.

The petition was filed through former president of Peshawar High Court Bar Association, Iqbal Mohmand. The petitioners requested the high court to declare their detention under the FCR as illegal and unconstitutional.

The respondents in the petition are senior superintendent of police in Peshawar, SHO of University Town police station, DSP of Univeristy Town, superintendents of central prisons at Haripur and Peshawar, regional coordination officer of Kohat, political agent and assistant political gent of Kurram Agency.

The petitioners belong to both Sunni and Shia sects and were invited to Peshawar by the administration for negotiating a peace agreement.

They stated that they came to Peshawar on May 10 and were staying at a guesthouse in University Town. The petitioners claimed that the regional coordination officer had asked them to negotiate a deal following which he would also visit them.

However, they stated that the local police of Peshawar arrested them from the guesthouse and were put behind the bars. They added that initially all of them were kept in Peshawar, but later on some of them were shifted to Haripur.

The petitioners contended that the police had no authority to arrest them under the FCR on the directives of the tribal administration. They added that as they were arrested in settled district they had to be produced before the court for fulfilling the requirements under the Criminal Procedure Code.