ISLAMABAD: The Sup­reme Court on Thursday summoned a complete record of people in 45 internment centres with information about their status like under which offences they have been imprisoned and for how long as well as whether or not they are being tried under any law.

“We should respect humanity and if the interned persons are real offenders then they should be tried under the law of the land instead of keeping their relatives and children in distress,” observed Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, who heads a two-judge SC bench that has taken up a number of cases relating to the issue of disappeared persons.

The bench regretted that even the top court of the country was not being provided satisfactory answers to the queries of the family members who had been running from pillar to post for years to know the whereabouts of their near and dear ones who went missing mysteriously.

The court said that those who had been picked up under the Action in Aid of Civil Power Regulations (AACPR) 2011 for their involvement in some crimes should be punished but after conducting a proper trial, adding that it wanted to know why these persons had been detained in the internment centres when they were not facing any trial before a court.

The AACPR promulgated on June 27, 2011 was applicable to the provincially administered tribal areas. The regulation gives the authorities the power to exercise it with retrospective effect from Feb 1, 2008.

A visibly disturbed Justice Khan regretted that he was seeing the same people in this court who used to appear before him when he was chief justice of the Peshawar High Court many years ago.

Justice Khan served as the PHC chief justice from October 2009 to November 2011.

The court ordered the authorities concerned to arrange a meeting of the interned persons — Tasif Malik, Khawaja Ejaz Mahmood, Mulazim Hussain and Abdul Jabbar Shakir — with their family members within a week. They have been detained in different internment centres.

The court disposed of the cases of Shabbir Usmani, Hafiz Iqrar and Ahmed Abbasi as they have already reached their homes and that of Abdullah who had been sent to the gallows after a military court awarded him death sentence for his involvement in terrorism.

Deputy Attorney General Sajid Ilyas Bhatti informed the court that the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances had disposed of 2,943 of the 4,329 cases referred to it from March 2011 to August this year. Another 1,386 cases are still pending before the commission.

He said retired Justice Javed Iqbal, who had been appointed chairman of the National Accountability Bureau, was still heading the commission.

At this, Justice Afzal Khan wondered why Justice Iqbal was holding dual office.

Mr Bhatti conceded that the whereabouts of many missing persons could not be traced and they were believed to have voluntarily joined different groups in Afghanistan.

Advocate Tariq Asad — the lawyer of Lal Masjid fame — argued that everybody knew who was picking up people, adding that there was no ambiguity in it.

The court referred 15 different cases relating to Lal Masjid and its seminary Jamia Hafsa to the commission and expressed the hope that the commission would decide the pending matters before these cases within a month. The commission should afford priority to the cases of missing persons, the court said.

Defence of Human Rights chairperson Amina Masood Janjua, who has been struggling for the recovery of her long missing husband Masood Janjua, informed the court that Faseehullah had been incarcerated in the Lakki Marwat internment centre.

At this, Justice Khan said he was at a loss to understand why the people who had been detained in internment centres were not being tried under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, and if they were not terrorists or criminals what was the purpose of keeping them in these centres.

Those who had been waging war against the sovereignty of the country should be dealt with sternly, but the trial of those who had been imprisoned in the internment centres should be completed as early as possible, he added.

During the proceedings and later at a meeting in chambers, Additional Advocate General for Punjab Razzaq A. Mirza reiterated that Masood Janjua had been killed by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The court adjourned the hearing until Nov 13.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2017