September 30, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 29, 2008

TIMERGARA, Sept 29: The prisoners in Timergara jail ended their strike after holding successful talks with government on Monday, sources said.

The negotiations were held with the prisoners in the jail on the special directives of Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan.

The government team was consisting of Swat ATC judge Khalilur Rehman, Sessions Judge Malkand Salim Jan, Timergara Sessions Judge Faqir Jadoon, Lower Dir DPO Fida Hussain and DCO Ghulam Mohammad.

The prisoners were represented by Maulana Mohammad Khalid, Humayun Khan and Shamsur Rehman, jail sources said.

A prisoner privy to the meeting told Dawn by cellular phone that the government had accepted their demands that hearing of their cases would be expedited and the written notification in this regard would be issued on Tuesday morning.

He made it clear that they ended the strike on the assurances of the government team. If the government failed to resolve their problems on war footings, they would resume the protest, he remarked.

“We will be peaceful for some days but if the authorities failed to meet our demands then we will intensify our protest,” he warned.

More than 450 prisoners of Timergara District Jail launched protest against what they called delay in hearing of their cases due to the prevailing law and order situation in Swat and the lawyers’ movement in the country.

Sources said that the prisoners were brought out from barracks for Iftar but they refused to go back and staged a sit-in in the prison yard.

The jail inmates, sources said, remained outside their barracks on Thursday and Friday nights. They wore black bands on their arms and refused to go back into their barracks when the district government officials tried to persuade them.

The inmates were of the views that most of prisoners were in the jail just for minor cases and they should have to be freed but due to delay in the hearings they were waiting since long.

Majority of suspected Taliban have been kept in the district jail, where, according to sources, they have formed a Shura (council) to press the government to meet their genuine demands.

The Shura of prisoners was headed by Mohammad Khalid while its members included Shamsur Rehman, Fazal Wadud, Maulana Shah Hassan and Abdul Wahab, the sources said.