ISLAMABAD: Law and foreign secretaries are likely to appear before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday (today) in a petition seeking repatriation of Dr Afia Siddiqui incarcerating in the US jail.

In the last hearing on July 7, which was joined by Dr Afia’s lawyer Clive Smith from the US through video link, the IHC Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan had asked the ministry of foreign affairs to expedite the process to conclude Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with Dr Afia’s lawyer before next visit to her due on Aug 7.

Though Dr Afia’s lawyer appreciated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cooperation, he questioned the inordinate delay of two months in signing the agreement.

The purpose of the non-disclosure agreement is none but to ensure that Mr Smith will keep the consular notes and other documents confidential.

Given the inexplicable bureaucratic hurdles that the court has been apprised of in executing the non-disclosure agreement, the need for the agreement is dispensed with, and is replaced by an order of this court that those documents would be kept confidential by Mr Smith and would not be released without the permission of this Court, to which Mr Smith consented.

The court observed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had failed to demonstrate rationally as to what impediment remains in the declassification of the consular notes and other documents, when the declassification is for an extremely limited purpose to further the objective of Dr Aafia’s release, and are not intended for general public dissemination.

The judge noted that “despite lapse of several years, Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not been able to achieve the objective of arranging a meeting between Dr Aafia and her family, nor has been able to apprise the court of the current conditions under which Dr Aafia is kept, and it was only after Mr Smith’s pro bono intervention that these two objectives were achieved.”

Further hearing in this matter has also been adjourned for today.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2023