Foreign agencies behind missing persons: Justice Javed Iqbal
Chief of the inquiry commission on missing persons Justice (R) Javed Iqbal has disclosed that foreign agencies with a well organized network and modern equipment were involved in the issue of missing persons and asserted that baseless propaganda was being done pertaining to the number of such people.
For the past decade, authorities have been unable to compile the complete details of those on the list of missing persons, Javed Iqbal said. The inquiry commissions chief further said that the list also contained the names of those living abroad and also those who have been involved in terrorism-related cases.
Addressing a press conference in Quetta on Saturday after a meeting of the commission, the retired senior judge of the Supreme Court said that the chief minister of Balochistan had sent a list of 945 missing persons to the commission. Javed Iqbal moreover said that complete details of even 45 persons on the list had not been made available.
He said in all 460 people are missing from across the country and of them 57 are from Balochistan. He rejected the impression that thousands of people were missing from Balochistan. He expressed the confidence that the missing persons issue would be resolved in six months time. Justice Javed Iqbal said that criminals or people kidnapped for ransom do not come in the category of missing persons. He further claimed that there was concrete evidence regarding the involvement of foreign agencies in the country. He said Pakistani intelligence and civil institutions failed to break the foreign agencies network due to lack of coordination and absence of modern arms and equipment.
The commissions chief said that in the past week 12 people who had been missing were recovered from Balochistan. He claimed that some of the missing persons were in Afghanistan but they could not be recovered because they were in US-controlled territory. Javed Iqbal said the federal government had taken the missing persons issue seriously but trust on the states institutions was imperative in order to resolve it.
He said the missing persons issue has become an international issue. He said people from Marri and Bugti tribes who have gone to Afghanistan at their will cannot be considered as missing persons. He further said that there are people in the missing persons lists who were involved in killings and dacoities and got bails from courts and then disappeared. Justice Javed Iqbal said that the issue would not be resolved with speeches or staging sit-ins but the organizations working for the missing persons should provide full details and the commission would recover them.
