Missing People Report by 26th Ordered

ISLAMABAD: The government on Monday directed all provinces to locate missing people in their respective jurisdictions and submit reports by April 26, a day before the end of the Supreme Court deadline.

A security meeting, held in the interior ministry, discussed the issues and directed home secretaries and inspector-generals of police to ‘locate’ the missing persons. The meeting, presided over by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, was attended by Minister of State for Interior Zafar Iqbal Warraich, Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah, Secretary for States and Frontier Region Sajid Hussain Chattha, Additional Secretary Ministry of Interior Imtiaz Kazi, provincial home secretaries, IGs, representatives of intelligence agencies and the IG of the Frontier Corps.

On April 20, the Supreme Court had summoned the secretaries of the ministries of defence and interior and the head of the National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) to appear on April 27 to tell the whereabouts of the ‘missing persons’ before the chiefs of the intelligence agencies.

Heading a three-member bench, Justice Javed Iqbal summoned chiefs of the intelligence services and top government officials in the next hearing of the case. The bench has taken up the petitions on the missing people filed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and former PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar along with the complaints of some members of the affected families, including Ms Amina Masood Janjua, Saqlain Mehdi, Aisha, Abdul Ghaffar, Amtul Hafiz, Fatima, Mohammad Ikram Alvi, Arif Abbasi and Syed Babar.

The application of Ms Janjua pertains to the remaining 10 people, including her husband, out of a list of 43 people still listed as missing. Their unexplained disappearance for the past two years is believed to have been caused by their suspected links to Al Qaeda or other jihadi outfits. The HRCP petition deals with 141 people who disappeared mainly from Balochistan.

The security meeting also discussed repatriation of Afghan refugees and closure of their camps in the Frontier province and Balochistan besides reviewing the progress on the decisions taken earlier and decided that Afghan refugees camps located at Jungle Pir Alizai and Girdi Jungle in Balochistan and Jalozai and Kacha Garhi camps in the NWFP should be closed down soon. Refugees living in these camps would be repatriated with the help of UNHCR.

The meeting decided that action would be taken against refugees without a valid proof of residence (POR) because the facility of repatriating refugees without a POR had lapsed.

The meeting also decided to impose strict border control at Torkham and directed the provincial governments and the IG of the Frontier Corps to control influx of terrorists into Pakistan from Afghanistan.

The meeting also reviewed the law and order situation in the border area shared by Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab. The three provincial governments were advised to keep the crime rate low.