Supreme Court of Pakistan. — Photo by AP

ISLAMABAD: Overruling an office objection, the Supreme Court accepted on Wednesday a petition by a woman whose three sons had been picked up by intelligence personnel for their alleged role in the October 2009 attacks on the army GHQ and the ISI’s Hamza Camp in Rawalpindi.

She alleged that her sons and eight other people had been kept in illegal confinement since May 29, 2010, and four of them, including Abdus Saboor, died in mysterious circumstances.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez took up the appeal of Ms Ruhaifa through her counsel Tariq Asad and summoned Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq, advocate general of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Inter-Services Intelligence Director General Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of Military Intelligence, the judge advocate general and the army commanding officer concerned.

The woman had appealed against an order of the registrar who had returned her petition terming it unacceptable.

The order was overturned by the bench which asked its office to fix the matter for hearing on Jan 30.

In her main petition, Ms Ruhaifa alleged that her sons Abdus Saboor, Syed Abdul Basit and Syed Abdul Majid and the eight other people had been kept in illegal confinement by intelligence agencies. Of them, four, including her son Saboor, 29, died in mysterious circumstances, without any trial and due process of law. Mohammad Amir died on Aug 15 last year, Tehseenullah on Dec 17 and Said Arab on Dec 18.

She pleaded before the court to determine whether the deceased and surviving detainees, including her sons who were civilians, were subject to the Army Act.

“If they are subject to the Army Act then the court should declare that their arrest and detention and the proceedings of trial have not been done in a lawful manner and, therefore, they should be set free in the interest of justice,” she said.

She requested the court to declare that the detained persons were in illegal confinement and had been tortured.

The court took notice of newspaper reports suggesting that the bodies had been left on the road.

Advocate Asad alleged that the bodies were left like that after the authorities at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar had refused to accept them.

The counsel said officials had told the Supreme Court during the hearing of then missing persons’ case that the men were in the custody of intelligence agencies and were being tried under the Army Act of 1952.

Three of the detainees had died because of torture and slow poisoning, he alleged.

The petitioner’s sons used to publish the Holy Quran and Islamic books in Urdu Bazaar, Lahore, from Maktaba-i-Madnia. On Nov 25, 2007, according to the petition, SHO Hasnain Haider of the area took them to the local police station from where they went missing.

The woman approached Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench on June 2, 2008, for the release of her sons but was told that three cases had been registered against them and four other people under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997. Since nothing was recovered and no case could be made out by the prosecution, they were acquitted by an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi on April 8, 2010, the petition said.

But before their release, detention orders under Section 3 (1), read with Section 26, of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Ordinance, were issued by the Rawalpindi district coordination officer and later extended for 90 days by the Punjab home secretary on May 6, 2010.

When a habeas corpus petition was filed before the LHC bench, their release was ordered on May 28, 2010.

But the Rawalpindi jail superintendent, instead of releasing them, forcibly handed them over to intelligence personnel on May 29, 2010.

The petitioner requested the Supreme Court to order the respondents to present Abdul Basit and Abdul Majid before it for medical examination and proper treatment.