The Pretoria High Court will rule on Monday on the urgency of an application for it to declare the arrest, detention and removal from South Africa of a Pakistani national unlawful.
Attorney Zehir Omar brought an urgent application on Thursday, asking that the arrest, detention and removal of Khalid Mahmood Rashid be declared unlawful.
However, Judge Francis Legodi said he will first have to determine whether the case is urgent, or if it can go through the normal court channels.
Omar is also going to ask the court to order Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Brigitte Mabandla to appear before court to answer questions on Rashid’s disappearance.
He is planning to ask the court to order that Rashid be found.
In an answering affidavit on behalf of the minister of home affairs, her department contends that the application is part of a campaign to ”discredit the government by painting it as some despotic government which does not respect human rights”.
It is malicious to say that Rashid was kidnapped, when he was legally deported to Pakistan.
”It will be argued that the Republic of South Africa and its institutions have no obligations both under national and international law to locate illegal immigrants who have been deported.”
The department contends that Rashid had entered South Africa without a visa and paid ”an agent” $600 to get through immigration and thereafter paid R7000 to an agent for a fake work permit.
It also states that after Rashid was arrested for being in the country illegally, he was ”happy to be sent back to Pakistan” where he could have a skin condition treated.
Rashid disappeared at the end of last year from Estcourt, where he was picked up in a night raid on his home, on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.
His arrest was contested in court, but home affairs officials said Rashid was deported to Pakistan within days of his arrest.
There were, however, fears in the Muslim community that Rashid may have been taken to an international detention centre.
On Monday, Omar send a letter to the International Criminal Court asking it to investigate Rashid’s ”enforced disappearance”, which he says is a crime against humanity.
In the letter, Omar claims that British intelligence requested its South African counterparts ”to abduct” Rashid, who he claims was lawfully in South Africa.
The Pakistani high commission in Pretoria this week said Rashid is in custody of the Pakistani government.
In the meantime, the court on Thursday declined to consider immediately a request from the Department of Home Affairs that Omar be detained for contempt of court. — Sapa