KARACHI – The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIED) heard a total of eight cases of missing persons in the Pakistan Secretariat on Tuesday. Appearing before the commission, Abid, younger brother of Muhammad Arif Noor, who was allegedly killed after being abducted, repeated his previous statements saying that his brother was abducted by state-run intelligence agencies and was killed last month. Arif was an environment officer in the Gwadar Development Authority (GDA) and was reported on October 31, 2010 from his Garden residence. His bullet-riddled body was recovered on March 23, 2011 from Windar, Balochistan around 120 km away from Karachi.
Two cousins of Abid also appeared before the CIED: Zaid Mehbood, the complainant of the FIR regarding his missing; and Aslam Hussain, who received his dead body. On being asked how he was certain that intelligence agencies were behind the abduction of his brother, Abid replied that the agencies’ personnel came in three vehicles with glasses tinted black and were escorted by two police vans. Following the disappearance of Noor, Abid had moved the Sindh High Court with a constitutional petition seeking whereabouts of his brother, showing his concern that his brother might have been killed.
The deceased, a Grade-16 officer in GDA, suffered a problem in his spine and had arrived in Karachi for medical treatment, but was abducted from his house located within the Garden police limits. Abid said he was a witness of all the happenings when plainclothes armed men escorted by the police had encircled the entire area and forcibly entered their flat No D-7, Jaffar Aziz Apartments, Garden East, and took Noor away. After hearing the statements, the commission was annoyed over such incidents of enforced disappearances and put off the hearing while issuing directives to the head of intelligence agencies to appear before the CIED in its Islamabad hearing.
During the last hearing, the commission had summoned Sindh Home Secretary, police chief, Defence Ministry Director (Legal), and the director generals of Intelligence Bureau, Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence. The representatives od the respondents appeared before the commission to submit their comments. The CIED also summoned the SHOs of the areas concerned to inform the families of missing persons.
The cases of other missing persons discussed before the commission included Mehboob Ali Wadela, who had gone missing on April 2, 2010 and was killed in February 2011, however, none of his family members appeared before the commission; Abdul Aziz, who went missing on February 8; Baig Muhammad on April 10; Abdul Samad on February 26, 2010; Saeed Ahmed on November 24, 2009; Jaffar Aziz on September 30, 2010; Muhammad Zahid on Jun 17 and Muhammad Shahid, who went missing on May 6, 2010.
