ISLAMABAD: A lawyer who had approached the Supreme Court on the 'disappearance' of 11 Adiyala prisoners has filed another application requesting the court to order placing the name of outgoing spymaster Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha on the Exit Control List (ECL).

Advocate Tariq Asad said in the miscellaneous application filed on Tuesday that there was every possibility that Gen Pasha, who would retire as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director general on March 18, would leave the country even though his presence was required because the prisoners' case was still being heard by the court.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry will resume the hearing on Friday.

The applicant said around 3,000 people were in the ISI's custody in various centres set up on the orders of Gen Pasha and it would be appropriate for the court to ask him to stay in Pakistan till the missing persons' case was decided.

"He may be of great assistance in resolving all the cases of missing persons."

The application said the prisoners had gone missing on May 29, 2010, from the Adiyala Jail allegedly on the orders of the ISI chief (as evident from DSR of Special Police annexed with the main petition).

The Supreme Court was informed on Dec 9, 2010, and June 1 last year through statements on behalf of the ISI that the prisoners would be tried under the Army Act of 1952 and hence they were not in illegal confinement. But the prisoners were never tried under the act and four of them had died in custody, the lawyer said.