Dr. Aafia Siddiqui case: IHC Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan directs MoFA to present remaining documents about counselor visits

ISLAMABAD, August 16 (SABAH): The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan on Wednesday directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to show court the remaining 10 confidential documents regarding the counselor visits to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

During in camera hearing on the constitutional petition of Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui, the IHC directed the Secretary Cabinet Division to nominate a knowledgeable officer for communicating with MoFA in this matter to appear in person on the next date of hearing to apprise the court as to why it has taken so long for Cabinet to revert to MoFA’s request for clearance of the aforesaid 10 communications.

Imran Shafique Advocate appeared for the petitioner Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui and Clive Stafford Smith appeared on video link. Barrister Munawwar Iqbal Duggal Additional Attorney General and MoFA officials also appeared before the court.

The court order said, pursuant to the last order, the hearing was held Wednesday but the MoFA official only brought the redacted copies, which were not of any use to decide whether the redaction was justified. There are reportedly 44 councilor visit reports, of which 34 were shared with the petitioner’s counsel with redaction, and 10 were withheld.

The AAG along with the MoFA officials present on Wednesday were directed to bring to the court the unredacted copies of all the 44 counsellor visit reports pertaining to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Of these ten are claimed to be confidential by the MoFA, for which they have sought the permission of the Cabinet Division for their release. The Cabinet Division; however, has been lackadaisical and it has been over 2 months that it has not even responded to MoFA. Even otherwise, a decline by the Cabinet Division will be reviewable by this constitutional court, when the relevance of these documents for the purpose of the relief sought would be in question, and it is for the court ultimately to decide whether the confidentiality was validly asserted.

Resultantly, the court ordered that the said 10 documents would also be shown to the Court in Chambers at 3:00 PM today (Thursday). However, the court would wait for a reasonable time only, for which two months have already passed, for the Cabinet Division’s reason before passing its order on the confidentiality status of these documents. The hearing of the case was adjourned till Friday (August 18).