PESHAWAR: A missing man acquitted in four terrorism cases last year but picked up allegedly by intelligence agencies soon after his release from Rawalpindi`s Adiyala jail died in mysterious circumstance in Peshawar`s Lady Reading Hospital on Monday.

Mohammad Amir was among 11 men who had been acquitted by the Lahore High Court in the four cases, including a rocket attack on Pakistan Aeronautical Complex in Kamra, firing shots with anti-aircraft guns at a plane carrying former president Gen Pervez Musharraf and a suicide attack on the bus of an intelligence agency in Rawalpindi. They went missing soon after their release in May last year from Adiyala jail.

The body is in the hospital because family members refused to receive it without an autopsy. Despite repeated attempts, doctors and police declined to talk about Amir`s death.

Mohammad Bilal, a brother of the deceased who is a resident of Rawalpindi, told reporters that he received a telephone call from the hospital that his brother had fallen seriously ill. When he went to the hospital the staff showed him Amir`s body and asked him to take it with him. “When I asked them to conduct a post-mortem, the doctors on duty refused to do so.”

Sources said Amir had been brought alive, but in serious condition, to the hospital about three days ago, but his family had not been informed.

Relatives of the 11 men had filed a petition in the Supreme Court alleging that they had been abducted by an intelligence agency soon after their release.

Two intelligence agencies had in December last year informed the court that the men had been recovered from terror camps and were being interrogated. The court was also told that the men were awaiting court martial under the Army Act of 1952.