ISLAMABAD: It seems that the civilian government has started asserting its power on the military and its powerful intelligence agencies as Human Rights Adviser to the Prime Minister; Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar has directed the chief of ISI to humanly treat the detainees under ISI custody.

“You are hereby directed to ensure that the detainees under the custody of ISI are provided professional and expert medical care and are treated in a manner that human dignity and well being of the detainees is not degraded in any way,” said Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar Human Rights Adviser to the PM in his letter to DG ISI Lt.Gen.Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the copy of the letter is also available to Dawn.Com.

Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, a law graduate who had worked in the law department of International Committee of Red Crescent, is currently serving as adviser to the Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani.

The one page letter written by the Human Rights Adviser on his official letter pad is said to be the first direction of its kind to the powerful chief of the ISI by a civilian cabinet member.

Khokhar had written the letter, reacting on a news item published in a local English daily, narrating the miseries and the alleged misstreatment by the ISI to the seven missing people who were presented before the Supreme Court on February 13th.

The above mentioned news story gave a brief description of the two brothers in which it was mentioned that they were looking like “Ghosts”.

Analysts are divided on this small but important development.

"This letter has strengthened the civilian govt," said Dr.Mohammad Waseem a professor of Political Sciences at LUMS. Another defense analysts seems to disagree,“In my opinion this is a discourteous letter,” said Dr.Hassan Askari Rizvi.

Pakistan has a chequered democratic history and has witnessed a civilian-military imbalance even during democratic regimes.