LAHORE, May 30: The Lahore High Court directed on Wednesday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take steps within one month for the release and repatriation of Pakistani citizens detained at the Bagram airbase, Afghanistan.
Hearing a petition, Justice Muhammad Khalid Mahmood Khan expressed his dismay that the ministry had failed to take any concrete step so far.
Representing the ministry, a standing counsel told court the previous directions by the court about confirming of nationalities of prisoners were not reached the ministry due to unavailability of the copy of court’s written order.
Justice Khan remarked that the persons in question had been held without any charge for years and were now being abandoned by their own government.
The standing counsel said the government would make serious efforts for the release of Pakistani citizens once their nationality was confirmed.
On behalf of the petitioner, Barrister Sarah Belal argued there was a three-step process for bringing home these detainees.
First, the nationality must be confirmed, then humanitarian and security assurances must be provided on behalf of detainees and then they would be repatriated, she added.
At this, the judge went on to say it’s a shame that a non-profit law firm was able to do more for these abandoned Pakistani citizens than their own government. Barrister Belal said the petitioner was committed to representing all 32 Pakistani detainees at Bagram, and she would not stop until the Pakistan government had reached and every one of these men returned home to their families.
On her request, the court also allowed addition of two more detainees to the instant petition, increasing the total number of detainees represented by the petitioner to nine.
The judge adjourned the hearing till June 30 and directed the ministry to come up with some result.
Sultana Noon, representative of the non-profit law firm Justice Project Pakistan, a fellow of Reprieve (a UK-based organisation) in Pakistan, filed this petition. Initially, the petition was filed for seven Pakistani prisoners.
The petitioner submitted that citizens had been detained at the Bagram jail without any charge or trial since 2003.
She alleged that Awwal Khan, Hamidullah Khan, Abdul Haleem Saifullah, Fazal Karim, Amal Khan, Iftikhar Ahmad and Younas Rehmatullah were abducted from Pakistan and shifted to the notorious US prison in Afghanistan.