ISI, MI admit to deaths of four Adiala prisoners

The counsel for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) directors general conceded before the Supreme Court on Monday that four out of 11 prisoners of Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, picked up by intelligence personnel for investigation into their alleged role in the October 2009 attacks on General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, had died.
He said some of the remaining seven prisoners were in Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar and Internment Centre, Parachinar, thus he was unable to produce them in court. “No one is above the law and the prime minister also appeared in court when he was summoned,” the chief justice remarked. A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez, directed the spy agencies’ counsel Raja Muhammad Irshad to file a reply explaining the circumstances under which the four prisoners died and produce the remaining seven prisoners in court on February 9.
The court also directed him to file a reply to the allegations leveled against his clients. He was told further that in the meantime, he should arrange a meeting of the relatives, if possible, with the prisoners admitted to Lady Reading Hospital. The court also repeated notices to the attorney general and advocate general. At the outset of the hearing, Irshad sought time to submit replies stating that he was engaged by his clients. To a court query, the counsel contended that now these prisoners were not in the custody of intelligence agencies, as they had been handed over to the provincial government. He asked the court to order the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to produce the prisoners in court.
“We don’t know where they are, but you had taken away these 11 prisoners of Adiala Jail here from the court, thus you should produce them now,” the chief justice told the counsel. Justice Hussain noted that four prisoners had been killed and their dead bodies were thrown on the road, but Irshad contended that this was not true and it was a painful allegation. He conceded, however, that four prisoners had died in custody. He said the remaining prisoners were not in a position to be brought to court. Defence Ministry Joint Secretary Chaudhry Muhammad Yaqoob and Director (Legal) Commodore Muhammad Hussain Shahbaz also appeared on notice. The petition was filed by a woman named Ruhaifa, whose three sons were among the men picked up by intelligence personnel for their alleged role in the October 2009 attacks, through her counsel Tariq Asad. She had made the ISI and MI directors general, the judge advocate general and the army commanding officer concerned respondents. She alleged in her petition that her sons Abdus Saboor, Syed Abdul Basit and Syed Abdul Majid and eight other people had been kept in illegal confinement by intelligence agencies since May 29, 2010 and four of them, including her son Abdus Saboor, 29, had died under mysterious circumstances without any trial and due process of law.
She said Mohammad Amir had died on August 15 last year, Tehseenullah on December 17 and Said Arab on December 18. She asked the court to determine whether the deceased and surviving detainees, including her sons who were civilians, were subject to the Army Act. “If they are subject to the Army Act then the court should declare that their arrest and detention and the proceedings of trial have not been done in a lawful manner and, therefore, they should be set free in the interest of justice,” she stated. She requested the court to declare that the detained persons were in illegal confinement and had been tortured.
She also alleged that the four detainees had died because of torture and slow poisoning. She said her sons used to publish the Holy Quran and Islamic books in Urdu Bazaar, Lahore, under an organisation called Maktaba-e-Madnia. On November 25, 2007, according to the petition, Station House Officer (SHO) Hasnain Haider took them to the local police station from where they went missing. She said she approached the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench on June 2, 2008, for the release of her sons but was told that three cases had been registered against them and four other people under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997. Since nothing was recovered and no case could be made out by the prosecution, they were acquitted by an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi on April 8, 2010, the petition said. But before their release, detention orders under Section 3(1), read with Section 26, of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Ordinance, were issued by the Rawalpindi district coordination officer and later extended for 90 days by the Punjab home secretary on May 6, 2010. When a habeas corpus petition was before an LHC bench, their release was ordered on May 28, 2010. But the Rawalpindi jail superintendent, instead of releasing them, forcibly handed them over to intelligence personnel on May 29, 2010, it stated.