PESHAWAR, May 11: A juvenile offender, Qismat Khan, serving 45-year rigorous imprisonment under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) in Haripur central prison has appealed to President Gen Pervez Musharraf to commute his sentence , said a press release on Tuesday.

He has been in detention for nine years since his arrest on April 20, 1995, by the administration of Khyber Agency. He made his appeal through an NGO, Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc).

Qismat Khan, who was a student in Karachi, his brother Milat Khan and cousin Ali Mohammad were charged under some sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) read with section 11 of the FCR.

The press release said that he was only 15 at the time of his arrest. His appeal to the high court had been dismissed on the plea that under the Constitution, the superior courts could not exercise any jurisdiction in tribal areas.

Sparc's provincial coordinator Arshad Mehmood, said that his organization was campaigning for the extension of Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, to Fata and Pata.

He said that the FCR was a black law, which should be abolished, but successive governments had been unable to do away with it owing to their vested interests. Qismat Khan, who had spent the useful part of his life in prison, is a challenge and an eye-opener for the society specially the superior judiciary, human rights groups and policy- makers, he said.

Coordinator Arshad Mehmood appealed to President Musharraf to look into the case of Qismat Khan and provide him justice.