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Pakistani security personnel escort a suspected militant after the supreme court in Islamabad ordered the ISI to produce them. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP
Every two weeks in recent months, a tired, middle-aged woman has made her way through the crowd of lawyers, policemen and detainees at the main courthouse in Peshawar, the restive Pakistani frontier city.
She is Hameeda Bibi, the mother of Farmanullah, and is an unlikely figure to be taking on Pakistan's powerful security services. Last week, she was in court once more to hear further discussion of how 1m Pakistani rupees (£6,400) should be paid to her in compensation by the state for the presumed murder of her son, a night watchman and vegetable seller who disappeared from their home in Nauthia, near Peshawar, last year and whose body, bearing torture marks, was found on a motorway 50 miles away.
"My son was picked up in broad daylight but returned in a sack," the 55-year-old widow said. "I think others should also do as I have done. I had only one son, the sole bread earner of my family, and I lost him. This money will help."
The cash has yet to be formally handed over, but the case has set an important precedent, giving hope to the families of thousands of others who have disappeared in unclear circumstances or are known to have died while in the custody of intelligence agencies.
Arif Jan, a lawyer for the families of the "disappeared", said there were 450 habeas corpus petitions demanding the release of detainees alleged to be held by intelligence services in Pakistan pending in Peshawar high court alone. "This case [of Hameeda Bibi] is a single case, but it is a step forward," he said.
Muhammad Yousaf, 45, the father of Amjad Ali, a farmer whose body was recovered from the tribal areas after he was missing for a year, said that he too would seek compensation.
"This amount should be enhanced as it will not meet the basic requirements of my son's family since he has left four children and a widow."
The Pakistani government, at federal or state level, has been reluctant to acknowledge responsibility and it has taken a new activism by courts to force the issue into the open.
"The provincial government was not agreeing to [this payment] but we could not defy court orders and cannot stop people from claiming for compensation," said Naveed Akhtar, a senior government lawyer at Peshawar high court.
Observers say the judgment in favour of Hameeda Bibi would have been inconceivable until very recently and is in part due to the battered reputation of Pakistan's military among the public.
Most of the "disappeared" are thought to have been detained by the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the main military spy agency, which has led the effort against the Islamic extremists who kill thousands every year in Pakistan, and against militants fighting for greater autonomy for the resource-rich southwestern province of Balochistan.
But failures to find Osama bin Laden or to detect the successful US mission to kill the al-Qaida leader in his hideout in the northern garrison town of Abbottabad in May 2011, and to effectively combat extremist violence generally, have sapped popular support for all military institutions. This has encouraged activist judges and journalists to take on a previously "untouchable" target, say analysts.
"There is an unprecedented public debate on the role and efficacy of the armed forces," said Raza Rumi, an analyst and commentator in Islamabad. "It was just never discussed before and that is opening up space for all sorts of new developments."
This month, a leaked report by a government-appointed judicial commission, examining how Bin Laden was able to hide in Pakistan for almost a decade and how the US special forces were able to enter the country to kill him, was critical of the Pakistani military and intelligence services.
Others are questioning the proportion of government spending that goes to the military. Pakistan's defence budget is about 3% of the nation's GDP, according to the World Bank, considerably more than is spent on education.
Human rights groups accuse the ISI of torture, false detention and other abuses. Up to 4,000 people may still be held, they say, of whom around 700 have been identified.
Last year, Pakistani officials admitted large numbers of people were in detention, but claimed they held only individuals who security services were "100% sure" were involved in extremist violence. Now, however, officials deny that any individuals are detained, saying the numbers of supposed "disappeared" are vastly exaggerated and include individuals who have "run away from home, been coerced into militant groups or are common criminals on the run".
"I cannot speak about the past, but currently there is no one held," one official said on condition of anonymity.
The earliest secret detentions identified by campaigners date back to the early 1990s. But cases increased in late 2001 as Pakistani authorities moved against militant groups following the 9/11 attacks. Some detainees were handed to US services or interrogated in their presence.
The numbers of abductions rose dramatically between 2006 and 2007, when Pakistan became a victim of intense Islamic militant violence. They continued after the country returned to civilian rule in 2008.Any new accountability is very limited however. One recent case in Lahore resulted in police being granted an arrest warrant for a brigadier in the ISI named in witness statements during hearings about the disappearance of a businessman in 2005. The supreme court in Islamabad ruled that the warrant should not be executed out of "respect for the institution", the Daily Times newspaper reported.
And not everyone is interested in financial compensation. "I will never sell my brother's soul," said Noor Bacha, 45, whose younger brother has been missing from their home in a village in Mardan district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, since September 2011.
Pakistan's 'disappeared': families go to court for compensation | World news | theguardian.com
Every two weeks in recent months, a tired, middle-aged woman has made her way through the crowd of lawyers, policemen and detainees at the main courthouse in Peshawar, the restive Pakistani frontier city.
She is Hameeda Bibi, the mother of Farmanullah, and is an unlikely figure to be taking on Pakistan's powerful security services. Last week, she was in court once more to hear further discussion of how 1m Pakistani rupees (£6,400) should be paid to her in compensation by the state for the presumed murder of her son, a night watchman and vegetable seller who disappeared from their home in Nauthia, near Peshawar, last year and whose body, bearing torture marks, was found on a motorway 50 miles away.
"My son was picked up in broad daylight but returned in a sack," the 55-year-old widow said. "I think others should also do as I have done. I had only one son, the sole bread earner of my family, and I lost him. This money will help."
The cash has yet to be formally handed over, but the case has set an important precedent, giving hope to the families of thousands of others who have disappeared in unclear circumstances or are known to have died while in the custody of intelligence agencies.
Arif Jan, a lawyer for the families of the "disappeared", said there were 450 habeas corpus petitions demanding the release of detainees alleged to be held by intelligence services in Pakistan pending in Peshawar high court alone. "This case [of Hameeda Bibi] is a single case, but it is a step forward," he said.
Muhammad Yousaf, 45, the father of Amjad Ali, a farmer whose body was recovered from the tribal areas after he was missing for a year, said that he too would seek compensation.
"This amount should be enhanced as it will not meet the basic requirements of my son's family since he has left four children and a widow."
The Pakistani government, at federal or state level, has been reluctant to acknowledge responsibility and it has taken a new activism by courts to force the issue into the open.
"The provincial government was not agreeing to [this payment] but we could not defy court orders and cannot stop people from claiming for compensation," said Naveed Akhtar, a senior government lawyer at Peshawar high court.
Observers say the judgment in favour of Hameeda Bibi would have been inconceivable until very recently and is in part due to the battered reputation of Pakistan's military among the public.
Most of the "disappeared" are thought to have been detained by the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the main military spy agency, which has led the effort against the Islamic extremists who kill thousands every year in Pakistan, and against militants fighting for greater autonomy for the resource-rich southwestern province of Balochistan.
But failures to find Osama bin Laden or to detect the successful US mission to kill the al-Qaida leader in his hideout in the northern garrison town of Abbottabad in May 2011, and to effectively combat extremist violence generally, have sapped popular support for all military institutions. This has encouraged activist judges and journalists to take on a previously "untouchable" target, say analysts.
"There is an unprecedented public debate on the role and efficacy of the armed forces," said Raza Rumi, an analyst and commentator in Islamabad. "It was just never discussed before and that is opening up space for all sorts of new developments."
This month, a leaked report by a government-appointed judicial commission, examining how Bin Laden was able to hide in Pakistan for almost a decade and how the US special forces were able to enter the country to kill him, was critical of the Pakistani military and intelligence services.
Others are questioning the proportion of government spending that goes to the military. Pakistan's defence budget is about 3% of the nation's GDP, according to the World Bank, considerably more than is spent on education.
Human rights groups accuse the ISI of torture, false detention and other abuses. Up to 4,000 people may still be held, they say, of whom around 700 have been identified.
Last year, Pakistani officials admitted large numbers of people were in detention, but claimed they held only individuals who security services were "100% sure" were involved in extremist violence. Now, however, officials deny that any individuals are detained, saying the numbers of supposed "disappeared" are vastly exaggerated and include individuals who have "run away from home, been coerced into militant groups or are common criminals on the run".
"I cannot speak about the past, but currently there is no one held," one official said on condition of anonymity.
The earliest secret detentions identified by campaigners date back to the early 1990s. But cases increased in late 2001 as Pakistani authorities moved against militant groups following the 9/11 attacks. Some detainees were handed to US services or interrogated in their presence.
The numbers of abductions rose dramatically between 2006 and 2007, when Pakistan became a victim of intense Islamic militant violence. They continued after the country returned to civilian rule in 2008.Any new accountability is very limited however. One recent case in Lahore resulted in police being granted an arrest warrant for a brigadier in the ISI named in witness statements during hearings about the disappearance of a businessman in 2005. The supreme court in Islamabad ruled that the warrant should not be executed out of "respect for the institution", the Daily Times newspaper reported.
And not everyone is interested in financial compensation. "I will never sell my brother's soul," said Noor Bacha, 45, whose younger brother has been missing from their home in a village in Mardan district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, since September 2011.
Pakistan's 'disappeared': families go to court for compensation | World news | theguardian.com
