PESHAWAR, Feb 10: Four detainees were shifted from Lady Reading Hospital here (to Islamabad) on Friday following the orders of Supreme Court, hearing a petition concerning the 11 missing prisoners of Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi.

The prisoners, who have been at the medico-legal ward of this largest government hospital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were brought out on wheelchairs as they were not in a position to go downstairs from the ward.

Their faces and bodies were covered with big shawls so they could not be visible to the media persons waiting at the entrance of the multi-storey compound where the ward is situated.

Interestingly, intelligence personnel carrying the prisoners had also covered their faces with shawls. They rushed the prisoners to the ambulance and whisked them away.

Relatives told Dawn that the prisoners were taken to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Islamabad, but they had not been allowed to meet them there.

Their presence at the LRH was made public by the counsel for intelligence agencies before the apex court on Jan 30.

An official at the hospital confided to this reporter that they had felt relieved as keeping the detainees was a tough job for them. He said that at the medico-legal ward they could not provide proper treatment to the detained persons, as due to security reasons the agencies did not accept their request for shifting them to the concerned units. A Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, was hearing a petition filed by Ms Ruhaifa, mother of two of these four prisoners, and had ordered the counsel for intelligence agencies, Raja Irshad, to produce the missing prisoners the same day.

However, the bench later fixed Feb 13 for the next hearing of the case and issued several directives to the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments.

The four prisoners are identified as Syed Abdul Basit, his brother Syed Abdul Majid, Dr Niaz and Gul Roze.

Four other prisoners, including Abdul Saboor – another son of Ms Ruhaifa – have already expired.

Officials of the agencies claimed that the other three prisoners had been detained at FC Fort, Parachinar, which was declared an internment centre last year under the Action (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulation for Fata, 2011. They were identified as Shafiqur Rehman, Mohammad Shafiq and Mazharul Haq.

While the agencies' counsel told the apex court that due to inclement weather the helicopter could not operate from Parachinar, sources there told Dawn that the weather was fine and a helicopter had already flown there. It is learnt that the prisoners have been shifted from Parachinar to undisclosed location.

These 11 prisoners were acquitted by an anti-terrorism court at Rawalpindi in 2010 in two terrorism cases, but were kept imprisoned under laws meant for preventive detention. When the Lahore High Court ordered their release from Adiala Jail in May 2010 they went missing.

In Dec 2010, Raja Irshad conceded before the SC that the 11 prisoners were in custody of intelligence agencies, but they were taken into custody from a conflict zone.