‘Lal Masjid documents cannot be made public’

ISLAMABAD: Attorney General Suleman Butt told the Supreme Court on Monday that the classified documents on the Lal Masjid operation could not be made public because the lives of witnesses would be at stake. He said this in a reply filed in the court on the issue of making the secret documents public. When a two-member bench comprising Justice Iqbal Hamid-ur-Rehman and Justice Faisal Arab took up the Lal Masjid Commission case for hearing, the attorney general argued that the government did not want the documents to be made public and the court should not make the report public. Tariq Asad Advocate said the report contained 30,000 pages and the attorney general had not even read that. But the court, while adjourning further hearing for an indefinite period, remarked that “leave other things aside and file your reply in response to the reply file by the attorney general. We are giving you time to file the reply.”