ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court asked the federal government on Wednesday to find out the legal provision which allows employees or workers of the United Nations (UN) to claim immunity by declining to answer queries on a case relating to a missing person initiated on the UN initiative.
A three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja which took up the case of Mudassar Iqbal, asked Additional Attorney General Tariq Khokhar to inquire about the law relating to workers of the United Nations.
Mr Tariq Khokhar explained that police had gone to seek information relating to whereabouts of Mudassir Iqbal and not to initiate any criminal case against UN officers and, therefore, they should have cooperated.
A UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearance had, on Sept 8, 2012, referred a matter to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearance headed by retired Justice Javed Iqbal through a letter suggesting that Mudassir Iqbal had been seen in a secret detention centre by several people and that the family of the victim had been informed about it through other people who had earlier been detained illegally. The letter, however, did not mention which area or place housed the secret detention centre.
On Feb 16, 2011, Mudassir Iqbal, a shopkeeper by profession in Shadbagh Chowk of Lahore had gone to buy groceries but never returned home.
On Wednesday, Superintendent of Lahore City Police Shahzad Nadeem Bokhari informed the court that treating the information given in the letter as a tangible lead, police had approached the Residential Coordination Office of the United Nations Organisation and met an officer named Zaman.
But the police were asked to route all queries through the Foreign Office because under the Geneva Convention on Immunity and Privileges of 1968, all employees of the UN enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
Justice Jawwad observed that no-one was challenging their immunity and asked police that the fundamental right of the missing person was more important.
Referring to the case of Nasrullah Tariq, a prayer leader who has been missing since Dec 12, 2011, the Supreme Court observed that the matter had reached a dead end since the police investigation suggested that he might have gone to Kashmir on his free will to take part in a jihad by crossing over to the border.
Clad in a black veil from head to toe and sobbing, Ms Saima Tariq insisted that her husband had been picked up by sleuths of some intelligence agencies.
She also mentioned the witness account of her brother-in-law Abdullah who reported the incident after three days without offering a tangible reason for the delay.
In his report Abdullah claimed that Nasrullah Tariq had been forcibly taken away by some unidentified men in a car.
But the investigating police officer insisted that he had thoroughly investigated Abdullah and had also met four friends of Nasrullah Tariq who told the policeman that the missing person had taken examination at Madrassah Darul Uloom Mughalpura before he went missing.
The investigating police officer was also told that students, during vacation, sometimes went to Kashmir to wage jihad on their own.
Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, a member of the bench, asked police officers if there was definitive evidence to conclude that Nasrullah had crossed over to the border to join some struggle or jihad. The reply was in the negative.
Justice Khawaja observed that the court could not send the police on a wild goose chase in the absence of concrete information but ordered the police to complete investigation and submit a challan.