Noor Mohammad, belonging to Akakhel clan of Afridi tribe of Khyber Agency, was overjoyed when he was informed over a month ago that his missing son, Minar Khan, had been detained at a notified internment centre in Lakki Marwat.

In accordance with an order of the Peshawar High Court, which ruled that he had visitation rights under the Action (in aid of civil power) Regulation 2011, he submitted an application to the concerned divisional commissioner by the end of August requesting to allow him a meeting with his interned son. He did not know that his over two years agonising wait of seeing his son would finally end in a tragic manner and he would instead be collecting his body.

“I received a phone call from Kohat informing me about the death of my 22-year-old son. I went there along with some relatives and received the body,” said Noor Mohammad, adding that he had yet to come to terms with the death of Minar Khan, who was the eldest among his eight children. The aggrieved father said that his son was taken into custody by members of a Qaumi lashkar, established by the security forces for fighting the militants, over two-and-a-half years ago and was subsequently handed over to the security forces while dubbing him a militant.

“I was told by the officials that my son had died a natural death. However, both the legs of the deceased were blackened which we suspect were either because of poisoning or he was given electric shocks,” he said. The man, who earn livelihood by driving a tractor-trolley, said that he wanted justice and expected the high court to at least bring to book the officials involved in the disappearance and death of his son. He said that recently three other men belonging to Akakhel area had also died in internment centres.

Like Noor Mohammad, there are several others facing the same tragedy. Their near and dear ones went missing after taken away allegedly by the security forces; they finally surfaced in internment centres with no progress in their cases and finally their bodies were handed over to the respective families. Recently, there is an alarming increase in death of detainees at the internment centres under mysterious circumstances.

Unlike Noor Mohammad, who now seeks justice for what happened to him, another elder, Haji Nek Badshah, is no longer interested in pursuing the case regarding deaths of his three sons at Kohat internment centre, but he is now only interested that his remaining three sons, who have also been interned there, should not be harmed. On Aug 20, a two-member bench of the high court took up for hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by him against alleged illegal detention of his six sons and four nephews.

The petitioner and his counsel Gul Nazir told the bench that he feared that if he charged any official for the death of his sons, the remaining alive detainees would also face the same fate.

The deceased identified as Barkat Shah, Tahir Shah and Bakhtawar Shah, had remained missing and finally when a list was submitted to the court by the provincial government in May 2014 their names were mentioned therein as internees at Kohat Internment Centre. The petitioner had also submitted application to the commissioner seeking visitation rights to meet his sons. However, he said instead of allowing that application he was given three bodies. He said the bodies were carrying visible marks of severe torture.

Haji Nek Badshah, belonging to Yousafkhel area in Kurram Agency, said that the security forces during a raid on his residence on Dec 12, 2012, had taken away his six sons and four nephews.

From time to time the high court has been issuing orders to the government for production of postmortem reports of the internees who had died the at internment centres. However, the concerned officials remained least bothered about such orders. On Aug 20, the court ordered the provincial home secretary to appear in person on Sept 29 after his failure to submit autopsy report of an internee. The deceased, Musafir son of Pervez, and his cousin Arif Khan, were allegedly arrested by the local police on July 25, 2011, near Haji Camp in Peshawar after which they remained incommunicado. Over a month ago the body of Musafir was handed over to his family members and the court later ordered production of his autopsy report.

In almost an identical case, a petitioner, Mohammad Noor, recently informed the court that the body of his son, Wilayat Shah, who was arrested from Hayatabad Township in 2012 when he was travelling in his car, was handed over to him. The deceased was also interned at Kohat Internment Centre. The court will now hear the case on Oct 6.

An advocate of the high court dealing with cases of missing persons, who did not want to be named, said that one thing common among several of the deceased internees was that their relatives had given application for meeting them in accordance with directives issued by the court in their respective cases. Secondly, in these cases no autopsy report had been given to the relatives as well as to the court, which showed that the cause of death of these internees was not natural.

A few days ago a bench of the high court ordered the home department to submit autopsy report of another internee, Bismillah Khan, who died at Kohat Internment Centre.

The brother of the deceased, Ajab Khan said that the deceased and his father Mian Ghaib Khan were arrested in Peshawar by the security forces on Sept 8, 2012.

Experts believe that these deaths had put a question mark on the treatment meted out to the detainees at the notified internment centres. They said unfortunately the two almost identical regulations, Action (in aid of civil power) Regulation 2011 for Fata and Pata, had not been implemented and the internees had been detained without any trial for many years.

Published in Dawn, September 15th , 2014