ISLAMABAD, May 18: The Supreme Court issued on Friday notices to the Ministry of Defence, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) on a petition challenging a law that allows putting people accused of terrorism in internment centres.

A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain had taken up an application about the health condition of seven Adiyala prisoners who had been recovered on earlier directives of the court.

The court issued the notices after it had been informed by an official of the internment centre in Parachinar that prisoners Abdul Basit and Abdul Majid could not be released because they were allegedly involved in anti-state activities and attacks on the army.

They were among the 11 prisoners who went missing from outside the Adiyala jail on May 29, 2010, the day they had been acquitted of terrorism charges. The prisoners were wanted for different acts of terrorism, including October 2009 attacks on the GHQ and ISI’s Hamza Camp in Rawalpindi.

Four of them were later found dead in mysterious circumstances.

The other seven were produced for the first time before the court on Feb 13 in a bad shape. They were first sent to Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital for medical treatment on the court’s orders and when five of them recovered they were shifted to the internment centre in Parachinar.

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Dil Muhammad Alizai informed the bench that Mufti Abdul Baees, brother of the two prisoners, had submitted an application for their release, but the interment centre’s authorities insisted that they were allegedly involved in anti-state activities and attacks on the army and, therefore, could not be released.

Advocate Tariq Asad, who is pursuing the cases of the prisoners, said he had also challenged the Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulations 2011 and requested the court to urgently take up the mater because the case of the two prisoners depended on it.

The counsel for the ISI and MI, he recalled, had already told the court that the prisoners would be tried under the Army Act of 1952 and now after keeping them in custody for quite some time it was being told that they could not be tried under this act. “Who will take responsibility for keeping the prisoners in custody for 20 months?” Advocate Asad asked.

He complained that during a meeting with the two prisoners at the internment centre, additional chief secretary of Fata Tashfeen had misbehaved with him and expelled him from the room. The court took notice of the matter.