VANCOUVER (CBC) - Pakistan’s newly elected civilian government should act immediately to resolve hundreds of cases of people who have disappeared after being arrested by police and intelligence agencies, an international human rights group said Wednesday.

In a lengthy report, Amnesty International says the new administration, elected after President Pervez Musharraf was forced by demonstrators an international pressure to allow a free vote last year, has done little to help the relatives of missing people, or to find out about the fate of the missing.

Often, the report says, missing detainees were arrested or taken away from their homes in the name of the U.S.-led “war on terrorism” and the prime beneficiary of the disappearances has been Washington, which needs to avoid “complicity” in illegal actions in Pakistan.

Amnesty is calling on the Pakistani authorities to immediately compile a detailed list of people who’ve disappeared and determine whether they are dead or alive, and whether they’ve been detained in Pakistan or abroad.

“This is an easy and achievable step forward that would signal a very strong break with the policies of the government of Gen. Musharraf,” said Amnesty’s Sam Zia Zarifi.

Even if some of those missing were guilty of a crime, Zarifi said, they had “a fundamental right to be charged and then tried properly in a court of law.”

New government promised human rights boost

Pakistan’s new administration, led by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, took office after elections last February, pledging to relax tight restrictions on civil rights imposed by Musharraf, a former army chief who came to power in 1999 in a military coup.

In November, Musharraf purged the Pakistan Supreme Court, sacking judges who had been demanding answers about missing detainees. The new government had pledged to reinstate those judges but has yet to do so.

Government spokesperson Sherry Rehman had no comment on Amnesty’s report.

“Prime Minister ... Gilani has emphasized the coalition government’s commitment to upholding human rights. We urge him to act immediately to resolve all cases of enforced disappearances,” Zarifi said.

Amnesty highlighted the case of Masood Janjua, 45, a businessman who vanished after taking a bus to the northwest border city of Peshawar in 2005.

The report included a scanned page from a diary written by another detainee noting that he had seen Janjua in another cell.

The report said that, in court, officials had repeatedly denied any knowledge of his whereabouts.

Rights groups accused authorities of obstructing efforts to find out more about those in custody, even when Supreme Court judges grilled senior officials about the cases. Still, several detainees were released under pressure from the courts.

Amnesty said it was impossible to provide an accurate number of those secretly detained.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimates that more than 400 people have gone missing after being arrested by security forces or intelligence agents since 2001.

With files from the Associated Press

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