SHC approves B-Class for the facilitator of Safoora carnage

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has directed the prison authorities to provide B-Class facilitates to a suspected facilitator of the Safoora Goth bus
carnage.

A division bench headed by Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi gave this direction while hearing the plea of Muhammad Naeem Sajjid, who had been accused of providing arms to the attackers.

His lawyer submitted that his client was not being provided the facilities of B-Class despite the fact that he was an educated person. He complained that Sajjid was not being allowed to offer prayers.

He stated that a military court had acquitted Sajjid in the Safoora carnage case and he had been granted bail in two other cases pertaining to the possession and supply of illicit arms. Nevertheless, he is not being released by the jail authorities.

The Superintendent of the Central Prison submitted that the Safoora carnage case was received from the military court and had been referred to an anti-terrorism court for submitting its report about whether Sajjid can be released along with two other accused.

The five suspects, including Saad Aziz alias Tin Tin, Tahir Hussain Minhas alias Sain, Asadur Rehman alias Malik and Mohammad Azhar Ishrat alias Majid, have been sentenced to death by a military court.

They had shot to death around 45 members of the Ismaili community in May 2015.

Former Fishermen Cooperative Society deputy director Sultan Qamar Siddiqui and his younger brother Hussain Umar Siddiqui and Naeem Sajid were arrested for allegedly facilitating the assailants. The three accused were also nominated in a criminal case relating to providing weapons to the assailants.

The families of the facilitators – Naeem Sajid, Hussain Umar Siddiqui and Sultan Qamar Siddiqui – had filed identical petitions, seeking their shifting back to the prison.

In the petitions, it was submitted that five accused had been convicted and their custody was handed over to the central prison. However, the whereabouts of the petitioners’ relatives are still unknown.

The military court had already concluded the trial and they are no longer required by them. It was stated that three accused were required in a case of providing weapons to the assailants, which was pending before the district and sessions court of the east.

The petitioners had complained to the judges that their relatives were not being produced before the relevant court in that case, nor have they been handed over to the prison authorities.