LONDON, Sept 3: Amina Masood Janjua, a leading light in the campaign for the recovery of missing persons, is on a visit to the UK and Europe to mobilise support for her mission.

The visit has been sponsored by Amnesty International which has arranged meetings for her with government officials, human rights’ activists, NGOs, civil society campaigners and media representatives in London and various European capitals.

In a meeting with a group of British intellectuals and media persons of Pakistani origin here on Tuesday, Ms Janjua gave a detailed account of her campaign’s aims and objectives and what it has done so far and what more needs to be done.

Her husband Masood Janjua has been missing for nearly five years. She has a list of about 573 missing persons of whom she says about 140 have been traced and nearly 40 of them have been released since she began her campaign.

Ms Janjua who divides her time between the family, her husband’s business — running a college and a travel agency — and the campaign for missing persons, says that she has a three-fold target: tracing the missing persons; getting them released and seeing them safely return to their homes.She said there was no typical profile of the missing person. “Most of them are from Balochistan, many perhaps have a beard, other than that there is nothing typical about those who are on my list.”

She was almost in tears talking about her life without her husband and narrated in choked voice the emotional sufferings of those whose sons, husbands and brothers are missing and with whom she has been liaising over the last four years.

She said that in the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry she had found a very humane person who was all the time making the administration come up with the right answers about the missing persons.

She said the present government had promised to constitute a committee to look into the matter. “They have made a number of promises but so far they have remained just that, but I am not complaining and I have full confidence that if they can they would certainly help recover the missing persons.”

She met Pakistan’s High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan on Tuesday who, she said, had assured Amnesty International in her presence to make exhaustive efforts to resolve the issue of missing persons in Pakistan.

According to a press release of the High Commission, Mr Hasan gave this assurance in a meeting with a three-member delegation of Asia Pacific Programme of Amnesty International comprising London-based campaigners.

Mr Hasan said he was deeply concerned about the detention of people without any proven charges against them, adding that he would make efforts at the highest possible level to address the issue.