The International Criminal Court was asked on Monday to investigate the disappearance from South Africa of Pakistani national Khalid Mahmood Rashid.
Rashid’s lawyer, Zehir Omar, has spoken with and subsequently sent a fax to the ICC office of prosecutors in The Hague asking it to investigate the ”enforced disappearance” of Rashid.
In the letter to the ICC Omar claims that British Intelligence requested its South African counterparts ”to abduct” Rashid who he claims was lawfully in South Africa.
This comes after the South African government said last week on Thursday that it received confirmation from the Pakistani government that Rashid was received by them following his deportation in November last year.
Earlier in the week Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula released some information — pursuant to a court order — about the deportation of Rashid.
The state attorney sent a written answer to Omar on Tuesday, in which he said the state could not provide a flight number or the place where the plane landed.
He could however confirm that Rashid was flown out of South Africa on a chartered plane from the Waterkloof air force base.
Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils said last week on Thursday that he believed Rashid was in Pakistan.
”I cannot say this in a guaranteed way. My understanding is that the gentleman is still in that country,” he told the National Assembly.
Kasrils denied assertions that South Africa would have colluded with any other party to sent Rashid to a foreign prison camp.
”I want to assure … it is not true that our services, whether from [the department of] home affairs or from the police, that we have connived with other parties and have sent this individual to Guantánamo Bay.”
Rashid disappeared at the end of last year from Estcourt where he was picked up in a night raid on his home for being an illegal immigrant.
His arrest was contested in court but Home Affairs officials said Rashid was deported to Pakistan within days after his arrest.
There were, however, fears in the Muslim community that Rashid may have been taken to an international detention centre.
Omar said the end goal of all the court action was to establish the whereabouts of Rashid. – Sapa