ISLAMABAD, Feb 27: The two alleged killers of Maulana Azam Tariq the city police claim to have arrested on February 20 had in fact been “forcibly disappeared” weeks earlier, their relatives insisted to Dawn on Tuesday.

They said the families of Mohammad Ali Asif, a resident of district Jhelum, and Mudassir Ali of district Bhakkar, had reported them missing to police in Pind Dadan Khan and Rawalpindi on January 9 and 10 respectively.

Charges of terrorism were slapped on them only after the Defence of Human Rights (DHR) organisation started probing the police about their disappearance, the relatives alleged.

Amna Masood Janjua, who heads the missing persons’ wing of DHR, told Dawn that she was informed of the disappearance of the two men on February 18 and 20 the police announced that it had captured two terrorists who had assassinated MNA Maulana Azam Tariq and his four gunmen in October 2003, 45 mourners on his first death anniversary in Multan, and MPA Binyameen and his two gunmen in July 2006.

Inspector General of Police of Islamabad Chaudhry Iftikhar however maintained that the two were arrested in a raid on a house in Sector G-6/2 on February 20.

He rejected the claim of the relatives that the police had been holding the two secretly for almost six weeks before announcing their arrest formally.

“It is a tactic with terrorists to spin such tales of disappearance,” he said.

Ghazala Bibi, wife of Mudassir Ali, who was in the business of installing security cameras in buildings, said police piqued by her participation in a protest against forced disappearances in front of the parliament, implicated her husband in terrorism cases.

Khwaja Javed Iqbal said his brother Mohammad Ali Asif was kidnapped by eight unidentified persons on January 9.