PESHAWAR, April 2: The NWFP government on Tuesday conceded before the Peshawar High Court that 90 activists of a banned organisation, Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM)  were airlifted from Afghanistan and have now been detained at central prison Haripur on the directives of army authorities.

The government filed written comments in reply to a writ petition filed by an inhabitant of Dir (Malakand), Inamullah Khan, challenging the detention of the said 90 persons by the government in Haripur prison.

A division bench comprising Justice Shahjehan Khan Yousafzai and Justice Ijaz Afzal took up for hearing the petition on Tuesday and directed the petitioner’s counsel, Abdul Lateef Afridi, to file a rejoinder to the comments within one week.

The government has claimed that the detainees went  to Afghanistan without passport and visa thus violating law of the land and of a foreign country. It was stated that the detainees crossed over into Afghanistan through the porous border without reporting at the immigration check point at Torkham established for that purpose.

The detainees, the government stated, had no business to go to a foreign country in violation of law for beginning a war in favour or against any element there. It was a fact, the government claimed, that most of the detainees had gone to Afghanistan on call of TNSM, a terrorist outfit proscribed under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The government has stated that the crossing over  into Afghanistan to wage war against or in favour of any element was an act of terrorism. It was stated that the detainees had been kept in Haripur prison for interrogation and the authorities had been proceeding against them under the relevant law.

Mr Afridi contended that the continuous detention of the detainees was illegal as they had not been produced before any court of law. He contended that they had neither been given any charge sheet nor informed under what law they had been detained.

Another bench of the high court has already reserved its judgment on March 28 in two habeas corpus petitions challenging the detention of about 57 suspected Al Qaeda members and 150 Pakistanis, arrested after  entering Pakistan from Afghanistan.

Both petitions were filed by a former MNA of PML(N), Jawed Ibraheem Paracha. About the detention of foreigners, the provincial government had claimed that they were pushed back into Afghanistan.