PESHAWAR, May 30: A close relative of three missing persons on Tuesday alleged that an intelligence agency had misled him into making a false statement that the detainees had been released.

“Ten days ago two officials of the intelligence agency approached me and asked me to withdraw a petition pending before a court and to announce that the detainees have reached home. They said that after the announcement they would release them,” Attaullah, father of one of the detainees, Fazalullah, told Dawn.

The three detainees, all of them Afghans, were allegedly picked up by an intelligence agency from a refugee registration centre in Kohat on Nov 22.

Fazalullah and his two paternal uncles, Shareefullah and Samiullah, lived at the Gangol Shareef refugee camp in Kohat.

They had gone to the registration office along with other family members, including women and children. According to eyewitnesses, some agency officials in plainclothes forced Shareefullah and his two nephews into a vehicle and drove away.

Their names have also been mentioned in a petition filed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in the Supreme Court.

The detainees have neither been produced before any court of law nor have they been allowed to meet their relatives.

He said that his family had been traumatised as the detainees were major breadwinners.

Mr Attaullah said that in the hope of their release he issued a false statement to the media and his counsel, but the agency had not yet released the detainees.

Family members have demanded early release of the detainees whose whereabouts were still not known. Mothers of the three missing persons had been suffering from various ailments but still have hopes for their release.

Mr Attaullah said that some of the recently-released detainees had told him that his relatives were kept with them at a ‘safe house’ run by an intelligence agency in Peshawar.