PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has disposed of the federal government’s plea to review last year’s judgement declaring the 2011 order to place the names of the family of former Khyber agency surgeon Dr Shakil Afridi on the Exit Control List (ECL) for travel restriction as illegal.

The decision came from a bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Syed Arshad Ali as the deputy attorney general chose not to press the petition, as the relief sought by the government has already been provided in the court’s detailed verdict on November 16 2023.

During the hearing, the bench pointed out that paragraph 19 of the detailed judgement clearly mentioned that if the federal government still felt that it possessed sufficient material regarding the alleged involvement of Dr Shakil’s wife and her children in anti-state activities, then it could proceed against them under the law on the basis of that material to bring them to justice.

On November 16, a bench consisting of Justice Abdul Shakoor and Justice Syed Arshad Ali accepted a petition jointly filed by Dr Shakil’s wife Imrana Shakil and her three children against the interior ministry’s decision to place their names on the ECL.

Deputy AG opts not to press petition against verdict on ECL issue

It also set aside the impugned order of the federal government issued on December 24 2011, and ordered the removal of the names of Dr Shakil’s family from the ECL and to hand over their passports to them.

In that detailed judgement, the court had observed that the respondents including the government despite laying a claim of alleged involvement of the petitioner and her children in anti-state activities along with Dr Shakil in 2011 had not initiated proceedings against them to date under the relevant law in order to bring them to justice.

“This aspect of the case raises a serious doubt regarding the alleged involvement of the petitioner and her children in the anti-state activities. In such a view of the matter, we do not see any justification before the federal government for retaining their names on ECL since 2011 till date,” it had ruled.

The bench had observed that the government had not placed before it any material that would show that it had examined it and applied its independent mind to the material, if at all any, placed before it by security agencies before making an informed decision to act on the recommendations of those agencies to place the name of the petitioner and he children on ECL.

The government later filed the review petition through a deputy attorney general.

In that plea, the government stated that at the time of arguments in the main petition, some material information regarding involvement of the petitioner (Imrana Shakil) in anti-state activities could not be elaborated along with substantial documentation being of confidential nature.

It claimed that the petitioner after visiting her husband in prison was regularly in contact with different personalities of foreign offices, having constant communication across the border, and exploiting the foreign media in the detriment of state interest.

Dr Shakil, who is accused of helping the American CIA trace Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, is currently serving a 23-year jail term at Punjab’s Sahiwal Central Prison.

His plea against his conviction by an assistant political agent in 2012 and upholding of that conviction by the then commissioner of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in 2014 has been pending with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) tribunal, which is currently non-functional.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2024