RAWALPINDI: The Lahore High Court asked the counsel for the federation on Wednesday to get written comments from the chief of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on a petition seeking release of 11 men detained after their acquittal in terrorism cases. Justice Saghir Ahmed Qadri of LHC's Rawalpindi bench asked counsel Babar Ali to get the response of the military authorities concerned by March 17 on the petition filed by Attiqur Rehman and others through their lawyer Ilyas Siddiqi.
Relatives of the 11 men detained by military authorities after they were allegedly taken away from Adiyala jail on May 29 last year by personnel of intelligence agencies have sought their release, terming their detention illegal.Citing the ISI director general and the chief of the army staff as respondents, the petitioners have sought the release of Dr Niaz, Mohammad Aamir, Mazharul Haq, Shafiqur Rehman, Syed Abdul Majid, Abdul Saboor, Abdul Basit, Shafique Ahmed, Said Arab, Gul Roze and Tehseenullah.
According to the petitioners, the secret agencies claimed in the Supreme Court in December that the men had been arrested from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and said they would be tried under the Army Act because they were accused of attacking military personnel and installations.
The petitioners said the men had been tried by a competent court for their alleged involvement in suicide attacks on the gate of the army's General Headquarters and a bus carrying personnel of intelligence agencies and firing anti-aircraft shots on the plane of former president Pervez Musharraf and rockets on the Kamra Aeronautical Complex in 2007.
Initially, the intelligence agencies denied but later admitted in the apex court that the 11 men were in their custody.
The petitioners said that in the absence of any trial and because of the fact that the men had been in detention for eight months, they had no other remedy but to approach the high court for their release.
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