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| Afghanistan/South Asia | |
| Court Orders Arrest of Police Officers For Illegally Holding Christian | |
| 2004-10-05 | |
| From Compass Direct Arrest warrants were issued yesterday by a provincial high court in southern Pakistan against two Karachi police officers standing trial for contempt of court. Deputy Superintendent of Police Qasim Ghori and Inspector Tasarrud Mumtaz Mehmood of the Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA) failed to appear yesterday before a special division bench of the Sindh High Court hearing their case. .... Charges have been filed against Ghori and Mehmood for manhandling several lawyers and abducting their Christian client from the Sindh High Court premises on October 22, 2002. The police actions flouted the court's specific orders, issued minutes earlier, to release the Christian prisoner from "illegal police detention." The case constitutes a rare legal challenge against members of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agencies, with two of its officers charged with alleged misconduct during security police investigations into a terrorist attack against a Christian welfare organization two years ago. Seven Christians were shot and killed in the still unsolved massacre at the downtown Karachi offices of the Institute of Peace and Justice (IPJ) in September 2002. At an initial hearing on the case in early September, the two police officers had tendered their "unconditional apologies" for the incident, claiming that they were acting "for the protection of Robin Piranditta." The only uninjured Christian survivor of the attack, Piranditta had been arrested at the scene by police and kept under so-called "protective custody" for four weeks at the CIA's Saddar center in Karachi.
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| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |