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LAHORE, Nov 5: Two writ petitions were filed in the Lahore High Court on Tuesday for the recovery and release of orthopae-dist Dr Amir Aziz.
PML-N’s Punjab secretary-general Khwaja Sa’ad Rafiq filed a habeas corpus petition praying for directions to the Interior Ministry for the recovery of Dr Amir Aziz from the unlawful detention of the Federal Bureau of Investigations and production in the court for being set at liberty.
It was submitted that the arrest of Dr Amir Aziz was unlawful because the FBI had no jurisdiction to undertake operations in Pakistan. The arrest and detention of Dr Amir Aziz had tarnished the image of Pakistan abroad.
He also prayed for an examination of the role of the agencies in Pakistan.
The wife of Dr Amir Aziz also filed a writ petition against the federal and provincial governments and the FBI for the recovery and release of her husband through the Lahore High Court Bar Association Secretary Shahid Mahmood Bhatti and Awami National Party leader Ehsan Wain.
She submitted that her husband had been picked up by the FBI despite the fact that he was a law-abiding citizen and was neither involved in any unlawful activity nor wanted by any agency in the country.
She submitted that her husband had been picked up by a foreign agency and was being kept in unlawful detention because of the failure of the government to protect the life and liberty of its citizens.
The people had been left at the mercy of the foreign agencies and felt completely unsafe.
The petitions will come up for hearing within the next few days.
REPLY SOUGHT: A division bench of the Lahore High Court comprising Mr.Justice M.Javed Buttar and Mr.Justice Syed Jamshed Ali on Tuesday directed the deputy attorney-general to submit reply to a writ petition praying for recovery of millions of rupees given away to lawyers for pursuing the accountability cases within a week.
DAG Sher Zaman appeared in the court in connection with the hearing of the petition filed by counsel M.D.Tahir in 1992 said that he could not submit a reply because he did not have a copy of the petition. The judges directed him to secure the copy and submit a reply within a week.
The petitioner filed the writ petition on the basis of newspaper reports that the Nawaz government had spent Rs2.8 billion on references against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. She had been acquitted in all the references. The petitioner prayed the court to order recovery of the money paid to the lawyers pursuing the references as they had pocketed it without rendering any service.
