'Perpetrators of enforced disappearances to be brought to justice'
By Bushra Rafique

ISLAMABAD—Senator Farhatullah Babar of the PPP has said that under the international law, enforced disappearances of citizens was a crime against humanity and even the individuals involved in it could also be tried at any time in the future and asked the human rights bodies and families of victims to seek recourse to justice under this law.
He was speaking at the workshop on enforced disappearances organized by the Amnesty International and the HRCP in Islamabad on Sunday.
He said that this provision in the international law was a powerful tool in the hands of victims and citizens that could be effectively employed to seek justice and put some fear in the hearts of the perpetrators of the crime of enforced disappearances.
The relatives of the missing persons and the human rights bodies should therefore gather relevant information that proved the involvement of individuals of agencies involved in enforced disappearances bring them to justice at some point of time if not now, he said.
He said that a question was asked in the Senate in 2004 that a copy of the law under which suspects were detained and interrogated, be placed on the floor of the House but the Senate informed him through a letter that it was a secret and sensitive subject and could not be discussed.
He said that Article 4 of the Constitution guaranteed equality before law and that every one must be dealt in accordance with the law. However, there was no law regulating the kidnapping, detention and interrogation of the suspects by the state's agencies and that it was an issue that must be urgently addressed by the courts, the Parliament and the civil society.
He said that the ministry of defense in a case of detention recently took the position in the Court that it exercised only administrative control over the intelligence agencies and had no control over their operations.
It is a matter of national embarrassment that none of the state institutions whether it was the executive or the judiciary or the parliament had powers to address this issue and people continued to be kidnapped in hundreds without questions and without accountability.