Pakistanis demand knowledge of missing persons’ whereabouts

Islamonline.net-Islamabad

Mufti Abdul Shakoor received a call on his cell phone last week from an unknown person asking him to go to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa (KP province, which borders neighboring Afghanistan) where his brother Abdul Saboor, who was facing court martial under the army act, is admitted.

Shakoor took no time to rush to the hospital, but he could not find his brother there. After an hour, he received another call by same person, but from a different number, asking him to pick the body of his brother from an ambulance parked on a roadside in the southwestern part of the city.

The ambulance was abandoned and all that was left behind was the body of Abdul Saboor, who was detained by the law enforcing agencies in connection with a brazen terrorist attack on the army headquarters, commonly known as the GHQ in Rawalpindi in October 2009, which paved the way for a full-fledged military onslaught on South Waziristan, the headquarters of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella of various pro-Taliban militant groups operating on Pakistani soil, and three other terrorism related cases.

Shakoor attempted to reach the numbers he was called from, but they were not in service.

29-year-old Abdul Saboor, along with ten others who were accused, has been exonerated by an anti-terrorist court Rawalpindi last May, but as soon as they came out of Adiala Jail Rawalpindi, they were whisked away by plain-clothed persons.

Shady circumstances

Later, it was brought on record by the government counsels that the accused were in the custody of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and were being tried under the army act.

“His (Saboor) body was full of torture marks”, Mufti Shakoor told reporters.

However, Raja Irshad, a counsel for the ISI claims in the Supreme Court that the deceased had committed suicide.

Abdul Saboor is the fourth civilian detained in the case to have died under mysterious circumstances over the past six months. Mohammad Aamir died on August 15 last year, Tahseen Ullah on December 17, and Said Arab on December 18. Their bodies were also recovered from the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar.

Interestingly, no autopsy was conducted, and even the police officials who remain present at a police post inside the hospital so as to deal with medical legal cases also turned a blind eye. The concerned doctors remained tight-lipped about the people who brought the deceased to the hospital and the cause of their death.

However, a vigorous media reporting and sit-in stages by the families of the missing persons have turned out to be a glimmer of hope for the remaining 7 accused as the Supreme Court takes notice of the media reports, demanding that the government and security agencies display the accused before the court on February 9, 2012.

The intelligence agencies shifted the remaining accused to the Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar on January 31, 2012. However, their families told reporters that they are not being allowed by the security agencies to meet them despite the Supreme Court’s order.

Growing phenomenon

Despite the installation of a democratic government following an un-ceremonial ouster of former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, there has been no let in the phenomenon of missing persons during the last four years, analysts and human rights organizations observe.

“There is no let up in the cases of missing persons. In fact, the phenomenon has increased during the so-called democratic regime”, Amina Masood Janjua, the chairperson of Defense of Human Rights (DHR), an organization working for the release of missing persons, told “Islam Online”.

According to Baloch Voice for Missing Persons, which has been highlighting the issue of missing persons in southwestern Balochistan province, where security forces are fighting Baloch militants who want separation from Pakistan, 3,000 Balochs have been missing over the last five years.

Amina, whose husband Masood Janjua too has been missing since July 2006, vindicates the Baloch organization’s claim.

“A large number of people have been displaced in the wake of military operations in different parts of Balochistan. Plenty of them are missing. We have no idea, whether they are in the detention of security agencies or dead”, she maintained.

Hamid Mir, an Islamabad-based political and security analyst agrees.

“It is surprising and shameful that the number of missing persons has shot up during the democratic regime”, he told “Islam Online”.

“The families of the missing persons had thought that their woes would be addressed with the ouster of General Musharraf, but it seems as if their problems have been doubled by democracy.”

Amina, who led the sit-in in front of the Supreme Court building, says her organization has registered some 400 fresh cases of missing persons during the last three and a half years.

A total of 1,030 cases of missing persons were registered with DHR during the last six years of which, Amina says, nearly 400 missing persons have been traced and released on court orders.

She says that the missing persons’ families are going to stage a sit-in for an indefinite period in front of the apex court building from February 15, 2012 if they are not released or presented before the court.

Amina says that the root cause of the missing persons’ phenomenon is based on lies from intelligence agencies, which too has rendered the judiciary helpless.

“Intelligence agencies whisk away the citizens in broad day light, but appear before the courts with a pack of lies that they do not know about them”, she said.

“Now, what can the courts do when intelligence officials and their lawyers come up with fake affidavits and oaths”, she charged.