ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will resume hearing on Monday the cases of missing persons that it had left halfway in October 2007.

Cases of Imran Munir and Mustafa Azam are on the supplementary cause list issued for Nov 16, to be heard by a three-judge bench comprising Justice Javed Iqbal, Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed and Justice Mohammad Sair Ali.

In 2007, a bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had indicated that it would hand down some guidelines to discourage tendencies of keeping people involved in sensitive offences detained, instead of trying them openly.

Munir’s case attained significance because authorities were directed to produce him before the apex court in 2007 to record his statement at the request of complainant Amina Masood Janjua, who had produced handwritten pages from Munir’s diary which stated that during his captivity he had came across a Rawalpindi businessman, Masood Janjua, who had been missing since July 30, 2005.

The authorities deny having Mr Janjua in custody.

Ms Janjua, the chairperson of the Defence of Human Rights, is spearheading a campaign for the release of detained persons, including her husband Masood Janjua, and has set up a protest camp outside the Supreme Court.

The government had on Thursday informed Ms Janjua about the formation of a six-member joint investigation team comprising officials of intelligence agencies to trace her husband.

Imran Munir, being treated at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, had gone missing when he was going for dinner with Brig Mansoor. He was later produced on the directive of the Supreme Court.

Munir was sentenced to eight years in jail by the Field General Court Martial on charges of espionage. Although his conviction was set aside, he was tried again.

The government had denied before the Lahore High Court in 2006 that he was in custody, but later admitted that he was under detention.

The Supreme Court had ordered then Islamabad IG Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed to personally take Munir into custody and get him admitted to hospital.

The IG was specifically asked not to hand him over to any intelligence agency after Munir had told the court that he had been kept in chains without medicine in the Mangla cantonment.