ISLAMABAD: Security officials produced five more missing persons in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, instead of the seven the court had asked for.
Those who appeared in the court with their relatives were living as free people, the court was told.
“The situation in the city is too dangerous to bring the remaining two who are in an internment centre,” said Advocate General of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Abdul Latif Yousufzai while talking to reporters.
He said that Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, who examined the missing persons in camera, was requested to dispense with the production of the remaining two for the day as they could be produced before the court at a later stage.
On Feb 25, a two-member bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja had ordered the KP government to produce a second group of seven missing persons, in a similar way in which an equal number of people had been produced before the court on Dec 7, 2013.
These are among 35 people who had disappeared in Sept 2011 when the army authorities are believed to have shifted them from the Malakand Internment Centre. The 35 are among 66 undeclared interned persons, including Yasin Shah, and a case has been taken up by the court.
Thirty-one of them were later declared interned persons and the remaining 35 are believed to have been shifted to an unspecified place. Two of them died of natural causes in the internment centre, one went to Saudi Arabia and 11 were in Afghanistan, the court was told.
Those who were produced before the court with their faces covered to screen their identity from the media were: Naeemur Rehman, Zakirullah, Mohammad Hashim, Ijaz Mohammad and Mohammad Saleh. The Superintendent of the Malakand Internment Centre, Mr Attaullah, was present in the court with relevant documents.
Appreciating the production of five more persons believed to be among the missing, Amina Masood Janjua, the chairperson of the Defence of Human Rights, termed it a breakthrough and said that history was in the making.
“Our legendary struggle for the recovery of our illegally detained relatives is finally bearing fruit,” she said but suggested that the persons should be produced in the open court in the interest of justice.
The five missing persons and their five relatives were brought in two vans which were parked at the court’s entrance. All of them — some young and some middle-aged — were taken to the same small court room where the earlier group of missing persons was produced, amid heavy presence of police which had cordoned off the area to prevent media interaction with the persons or their relatives. The courtroom is close to the entrance doors.
The same exercise was repeated when they were taken back after court proceedings.
Later, Latif Yousufzai told reporters that the persons were called one by one by Justice Ejaz Afzal and identified with the help of Attaullah and their brothers and other relatives.
A report about the presentation of the missing persons will be submitted to the court when it will resume hearing of the missing persons’ case on Wednesday.