PESHAWAR: Egyptian engineer, family members file petition for bail
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, April 24: An Egyptian engineer and seven members of his family who were detained by an intelligence agency for a year have filed a bail petition in a local court.
A bail petition was also filed on behalf of two Tajik boys, Said Akber alias Hussain and Khalid Maroof, who were arrested by the Pakistan Army in 2004 in South Waziristan.
The court of judicial magistrate Malik Amjid Raheem fixed April 28 for hearing these petitions.
Security agencies had handed over the 10 foreigners to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on April 18. The FIA registered FIRs against them under section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, and charged them with illegally staying in Pakistan.
The detainees were produced before the court for the first time on April 20 and have now been in the Peshawar central prison on the orders of the judicial magistrate.
The Egyptian petitioners are: Engineer Farooq bin Saad, his sons Abdur Rehman, Obaid and Abdullah, his wife Fatima and daughters Aasia, Barah and Khadija. Farooq and one of his daughters have been suffering from visual impairment, while Fatima has been suffering from minor paralysis.
The petition was filed by the president of Peshawar District Bar Association, Haji Fida Gul. A former MNA of Pakistan Muslim League (N), Jawed Ibrahim Paracha, has also been pursuing their case.
Mr Paracha and Fida Gul told journalists that the detainees were innocent and had been kept in illegal detention for different durations.
The Egyptian family was arrested from a residence at Dwa Sarae village in Charsadda district on May 23, 2005, by an intelligence agency. It was reported that the family was linked with Al-Qaeda.
One of the three boys, Haris, told journalists that they were severely tortured during custody. “For a week we were tied up in a room and constantly interrogated by our captors,” he said in broken Pushto. The interrogators, he said, were constantly putting questions to them about Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
He said that their father was an engineer and had been working with a firm in Egypt named Al Fanoon-i-Taskeliya. He said that during the Afghan war their father had come to Pakistan about 19 years ago and started working with an NGO.
He claimed that they went to Afghanistan during Taliban rule and after the fall of that government they were detained by the Americans for a brief period. However, he added that they were released when the interrogators found them innocent. In Afghanistan, he said, his father and sister suffered an eye ailment after coming into contact with some chemicals which finally resulted in their blindness.
The boy said that he had come to Pakistan and started residing in Charsadda from where they were arrested last year. He claimed that they had valid documents in Pakistan which they had lost about eight years ago.
The two Tajik boys, Hussain and Khalid, who were aged 12 and 15 respectively at the time of their arrest, were arrested on Oct 1, 2004. They were initially accused of being members of Al Qaeda.
Both Hussain, son of Abdullah, and Khalid, son of Hasba, belong to Urjinzabad area of Tajikistan. Their arrest was disclosed in a press briefing by the then Peshawar Corps Commander Lt. Gen Safdar Hussain and they were produced before the media on Nov 25, 2004.
They were arrested in Sarwekai area when a landmine killed four local students and left two others wounded. Security forces claimed that they were part of a group of foreign militants waging a bloody fight against Pakistan.
