PESHAWAR, Dec 7: Speakers at a seminar held on Thursday called upon the government to do away with all the “safe houses set up by the intelligence agencies and set free scores of detainees.”

They appealed to the superior courts to order the registration of cases against intelligence officials who, they alleged, were involved in kidnapping people in total disregard of the Constitution.

Entitled “Enforced Disappearance”, the seminar was organised by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan at the Peshawar Press Club. The HRCP has been observing a week about disappearances — starting from Dec 4 and ending on Dec 10, the International Human Rights day.

Noted human rights activist Afrasiab Khattak said that once a genuine democratic set-up was in place in the country, officials belonging to all intelligence agencies would be prosecuted for their offences. HRCP vice-chairman Kamran Arif pointed out that the commission had documented 245 cases of disappearances, but the actual number of such cases was much higher because in a majority of them, the affected families had not approached the courts, the media and human rights organisations.

The chairman of the World Prisoners’ Relief Commission, Haji Jawed Ibrahim Paracha, claimed that at least 130 women had been kept in different detention facilities run by intelligence personnel. “Two of the women — Ms Habiba and Ms Hafsa — are seriously ill and they needed immediate treatment. There are scores of such stories that speak of the high-handedness of these agencies,” he remarked.

Mr Paracha pointed out that there were various cases involving foreigners as well as Pakistanis, who had been kept incommunicado for years but were later released. He said that about 10 days ago Faqir Zafarullah Awan was taken into custody at Ring Road by an agency at midnight, when he was taking his pregnant wife to a hospital.