Missing person’s case

Govt appeal against IHC verdict deplorable: Babar

By Our correspondent

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) Secretary General Farhatullah Babar Thursday deplored a government’s appeal against landmark Islamabad High Court verdict in a missing person’s case.

The IHC verdict in March authored by Justice Athar Minallah ordered financial compensation to the family of victim and imposed fine on state functionaries including a former general and former IG police.

“I was shocked that instead of acting upon this landmark verdict the government decided to go in appeal against it and that also within a month of minister for human rights promising amendments to the law to make enforced disappearance a criminal offense,” he said while speaking at a seminar on missing persons at the Islamabad High Court Bar.

Babar said the human rights minister was an honorable person and she could not have taken this decision on her own but some other people were calling the shots.

He said after General Pervez Musharraf's admission of secretly handing hundreds of alleged militants over to the US after 9/11 in return for millions of dollars there was no need for any proof that state agencies were involved in enforced disappearances.

“When the Supreme Court, Parliament and the civilian governments all fail in tracing the missing persons it clearly means that those involved are invisible and more powerful than the state. Till today not one person has been arrested and punished for the crime,” he said.

Babar said people are forced to think that such total impunity can be enjoyed only by those individuals and institutions who reject transparency and accountability.

“Some missing persons have been shifted to internment centres when it was no longer possible to keep them in custody,” he said.

However, he said these internment centres are the Abu Ghraib prisons of Pakistan, as there’s no complete information about them nor about how many of them died while in custody.

He paid rich tribute to the IHC Judge Athar Minallah, petitioner Mahira Sajid and the young lawyers who pleaded the case in the court.

Farhatullah Babar called for criminalising enforced disappearances as Sri Lanka had done and the adoption of the unanimous 2016 Senate report on missing persons that also included legislation for the oversight of state intelligence agency. He also called for signing the Convention on Enforced Disappearances and a peep into the Abu Ghraib prisons in Pakistan called internment centers.

Farhatullah Babar also called for making public the 2010 report of the first Commission on Enforced Disappearances as well as of the UN Working Group that visited Pakistan in 2012.

He said that Chairman of Commission Javed Iqbal recently informed the Senate HR Committee that 153 officials had been identified for involvement and asked as to what action had been taken against them.