Home Department told to file reply until March 7

Author: Staff Report

LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) Wednesday sought a reply from the Punjab Home Department in a petition against alleged detention of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, his aides Prof Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid, Qazi Kashif Hussain, Abdullah Ubaid and others.

The bench directed the Home Department to submit its reply until March 7.

Hafiz Saeed and others had challenged their detention ordered by the provincial government.

Counsel for petitioners A K Dogar submitted that the provincial government in light of the Interior Ministry’s order had detained the petitioners for a period of 90 days in exercise of powers under section 11-EEE(1) of Anti Terrorism Act 1997.

He said that Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in a statement had said the government was fulfilling its obligations under the United Nations resolutions.

He asserted that the government could not curtail the liberty of the petitioner merely on the basis of the UN resolutions.

“By doing so, the government had proved that the Pakistan was a servile and a dependent nation,” he argued. He requested the court to set aside the detention notification and order authorities concerned to set the petitioners at liberty.

On January 31, the Punjab government placed Hafiz Saeed and four other party leaders under house arrest after a letter issued by the Interior Ministry. The letter, issued to the provincial government on January 29, stated: “As per the UN Security Council sanctions, two organizations – the JuD and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) – a public welfare arm of the JuD, had been put on the watch list and listed in the second schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The Interior Ministry on January 27 intimated that JuD and the FIF were allegedly engaged in activities that could be prejudicial to peace and security, and were in violation of Pakistan’s obligations to the UN Security Council Resolution 1267.

A number of JuD and FIF pamphlets have also been made part of the petition, which highlighted the organisations’ volunteer work in different parts of the country.