Pakistan Press International (Published: 26 July 2008)
COPYRIGHT 2008 Asia Pulse Pty Ltd

LAHORE, July 25 (PPI): The former Federal Minister for Human Rights and current elected member of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee at Geneva, Mr. Ansar Burney, on Friday requested the Afghan and United States Embassies in Islamabad to allow Ansar Burney Trust members to visit Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan in an effort to locate missing and illegally detained Pakistanis.

In letters to the United States and Afghan Ambassadors in Islamabad, Mr. Ansar Burney requested that lawyers of his organisation be allowed to visit Bagram Jail to find and meet such unfortunate prisoners on humanitarian grounds.

The Ansar Burney Trust, which visits prisons and detention centres almost all over the world to lobby for the improvement of prisoners rights, jail conditions and provide legal and financial assistance to wrongfully imprisoned prisoners, has over the past year received reports that many Pakistani nationals who have been illegally abducted from their homes and imprisoned without a trial have ended up in Bagram.

One such case is that of Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a lady who was arrested with her three young children in 2003 for suspected (yet never proven) links to Al-Qaeda. Since then, it is reported that she has been detained in Bagram detention centre with male prisoners, where she has been sexually abused and tortured to the point of losing her mental balance.

The Ansar Burney Trust has also been contacted by family members of dozens of other Pakistani prisoners lodged illegally in Bagram without a trial; however, in fear of further persecution they have requested for complete confidentiality in their cases.

Mr. Ansar Burney, Chairman of the Trust, requested the Afghan and US Governments to allow him and other Trust lawyers to visit the prisoners in Afghanistan as their legal aids appointed by their families

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