London, July 23 : In a new report, the international human rights body, the Amnesty International has demanded of the Pakistan government to immediately reveal details of the whereabouts of hundreds of the missing people over the past few years. It also called upon the federal government to investigate all cases and hold to account those responsible, including the country’s security and intelligence agencies.

It also demanded that Pakistan’s new government reinstate deposed judges who had previously been investigating cases involving the missing people.

The report is the latest in an ongoing campaign by Amnesty International to end the practice of enforced disappearances worldwide.

In the report titled “Denying the undeniable, enforced disappearances in Pakistan”, Amnesty International uses official court records and affidavits of victims and witnesses of enforced disappearances to confront the Pakistan authorities with evidence of how government officials, especially from the security and intelligence agencies, obstructed attempts to trace those who had disappeared.

Hundreds of people who have “disappeared” were detained under counter-terrorism measures justified by Pakistan as part of the US-led ‘war on terror’.

The report also called on other governments, most notably the US, to ensure that they were not complicit in, contributing to, or tolerating the practice of enforced disappearances. Many people who have been secretly held in detention centres in Pakistan say they were interrogated by Pakistani intelligence agencies but also by foreign intelligence agents, the Dawn quoted the Amnesty International report as saying.

“Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has emphasised the coalition government’s commitment to upholding human rights. We urge him to act immediately to resolve all cases of enforced disappearance. As a first immediate measure, the new government should ease the suffering of the relatives of the ‘disappeared’ by either releasing the detainees or transferring them to official places of detention,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific director.

In 2006, Amnesty International documented dozens of cases of enforced disappearances in Pakistan, focusing on people who were picked up in the counterterrorism measures adopted by Pakistan in the context of the US-led ‘war on terror’. At that time, President Pervez Musharraf dismissed Amnesty International’s allegations by saying: “I don’t even want to reply to that, it is nonsense, I don’t believe it, I don’t trust it.” He added that his government had detained 700 people but that all were accounted for.

In March 2007, President Musharraf again asserted that the claim that hundreds of persons had disappeared in the custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies had “absolutely no basis” but that in fact these individuals had been recruited or lured by “jihadi groups” to fight. “I am deadly sure that the missing persons are in the control of militant organisations,” he said. (ANI)