PESHAWAR, Nov 13: The Peshawar High Court here on Wednesday sought comments from the director general, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the Ministry of Interior on the detention of five Arab employees of a Kuwaiti NGO.

A two-member bench, comprising Justice Khalida Rachied and Justice Qaim Jan Khan, also put the attorney general for Pakistan on notice, with the direction that the four identical writ petitions should be fixed after Eid.

The NGO, Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, is one of the seven organisations recently put on a terrorist lists by the US State Department.

The deputy attorney general, Salahuddin Khan, informed the bench that the detainees were not in the custody of the Pakistan Army.

The bench directed him to inquire from other respondents regarding the whereabouts of the Arabs.

Senior advocate Ikram Chaudhry appeared for the petitioners, who are close relatives of the five detainees— Hamad Ali, Mohammad Al Ghazali, Hassan Khalil, Al-Rasheed and Jalib Mohammad — and contended that these petitions had been pending before the court since June, but the respondents had not been filing comments.

He added that the detainees had been kept in the illegal detention.

He argued that they had been picked up from their respective residences by the joint teams of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan Army and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and kept in illegal detention since May 27.

The respondents in the petitions are the Federation of Pakistan through Gen Pervez Musharraf, Ministry of Defence through secretary defence, Ministry of Interior through federal secretary, NWFP Inspector General of Police and the Inter-Services Intelligence director-general.

At the very outset of the proceedings, Salahuddin Khan informed the court that he had received comments from the Ministry of Defence, which had claimed that the detainees were not in the custody of the army. But the reply from other respondents had not been received, he added.

He contended that the petitioners had admitted that the detainees were Kuwaiti nationals.

The bench inquired from him whether the laws of the land were not applicable to the foreigners; and whether it was not the responsibility of the government to look after the well-being of the foreigners and to follow due process of law while detaining them.

Mr Chaudhry argued that the respondents had been using delaying tactics, and said the relatives of the detainees had yet not been told where they had been kept.

He requested the bench to sought comments from the other respondents including the ISI and the Ministry for Interiors.

The petitioners have prayed the court to declare the detention and arrest of the detainees as unauthorised, without jurisdiction and illegal. They also prayed the bench to order production of the detainees before the court and to set them at liberty.