KARACHI, June 19: A division bench of the Sindh High Court passed a consensus order on Thursday for the DNA test of a fugitive Pakistani American detained in a jail here. The special bench comprising Justices Mushir Alam and S. Ali Aslam Jafri set aside the inquiry report that declared accused Haris Hassan ‘not guilty’ after a preliminary probe under the Extradition Act and directed judicial magistrate Sadaf Asif to conduct a fresh probe in the light of new medical evidence. The writ petition moved by the federal government was converted into a petition for revision and was decided by agreement between the parties.

The jail authorities were directed to facilitate the DNA and other blood tests on Monday in the presence of Haris’s father Nadir Hassan, and Deputy Attorney-General Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui, who assisted Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan in proceedings on the writ petition.

The testing would be done by what the AG described as the least intrusive method of obtaining cotton swabs from ‘the inside walls of Haris’s cheeks’. The blood samples would be sent to the US Federal Investigation Bureau’s laboratory in Washington for analysis and comparison. The AG informed the bench on Thursday that Haris had a previous conviction for raping a teenaged girl on his record in the United States, according to the US embassy in Islamabad, which has sought extradition of the accused.

The FBI lab report would be received in eight weeks, after which the judicial magistrate would commence the fresh probe. The accused would be free to contest any adverse findings in the lab report. As for bail, the bench refused to issue any directions but observed that the detainee was at liberty to seek any legal remedy.

Haris and two others, Ali Tleis and Erik Nathianel Muchlenbein, were accused of kidnapping, rape and assault of an American girl Clarissa Kritzman and her boyfriend Jeremiah Kelly in Detroit, Michigan, USA, on January 20, 2002. A Michigan magistrate issued warrants against Haris but he and his parents returned to Pakistan soon after the occurrence. Both the co-accused were convicted.