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WEEKLY
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| Detention of Sufi Muhammad’s sons |
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PHC issues notices to Home Dept, Swat DCO
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Ghulam Dastageer
PESHAWAR: A two-judge bench of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) Tuesday put the NWFP Home Department and Swat district coordination officer (DCO) on notice in detention case of three sons of outlawed Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Muhammad.
The bench, which comprised of Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and Justice Syed Liaquat Ali Shah, directed both petitioners to clear their position in the case on the next hearing. The court adjourned hearing to a date in office.
The petitioners — Fazlullah, Abdullah and Abdur Rahman — moved the PHC through one of their relatives, Muhammad Nasir. The petitioners stated that on August 31, 2009, the Peshawar and Saidu police picked them up from their house in Dir Colony on Ring Road, Peshawar and put them in illegal confinement in different police stations, including Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Peshawar.
The petitioners said it had come into the knowledge of their relatives that they had been charged under Section 3(1) of MPO by Swat DCO, detaining them for 90 days in the Haripur Prison.
The petitioners’ lawyer, Muhammad Atlas Khan, stated that detenue Fazlullah was a LLB final-year student at the International Islamic University Islamabad while Abdullah was student of a seminary in Swabi district. He said that detenues were not involved in any criminal activity and the Swat DCO had confined them for 90 days without evidence against them, which was unlawful and against citizens’ liberty provided by the Constitution.
The counsel prayed the court that the detention order of the petitioners was against the law and facts and material available on the record, thus their detention order should be declared void.
The NWFP home and tribal affairs secretary, Swat DCO, Swat district police officer and in-charge of Saidu Sharif Police Station have been made respondents in the petition.
Earlier another three sons of defunct TNSM chief — Rizwanullah, Hayatullah and Ziaullah — who were also detained under the same section of the MPO, had moved the PHC, which allowed their petition and issued their release orders.
Sufi Muhammad was also arrested under Section 3 of MPO like his three sons for 30 days and sent to the jail. Subsequently, a sedition case was filed against him in a police station in Mingora on the basis of a speech that he had made at a public meeting at the Grassy Ground in the city on April 19, 2009 in which he had declared the superior courts of the country un-Islamic and demanded enforcement of Shariah in Malakand Division. His sons, both arrested earlier and recently, were not charged in the sedition case.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
