THE 10 Pakistanis deported from the island on suspicion of terrorist links were wrongly detained by the police, their lawyer in Cyprus Sotiris Drakos claimed yesterday, backing up a complaint by the Pakistani human rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International and Prisoners Aid Society.
The Organisation yesterday issued a statement saying the authorities had been mistaken to arrest the 10 students on suspicion of having links with the al Qaeda network.
The statement said they would be taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
In the announcement, human rights lawyer Ansar Burney said he had told the UN that the Cypriot government had given Pakistanis and Islam as a whole a bad name by deporting innocent students.
“This nonsense is creating hatred among the peaceful human beings,” said Burney.
He said he would be appealing to the court of human rights for the greater interest of justice, humanity and human rights. Burney admitted that terrorists should face justice whether they be Muslims, Jews, Hindu, Christian or of any other religion but innocents should be spared.
“There should be no discrimination on cast, colour, creed, religion, etc. between human beings,” Burney said, adding he was not convinced by the government’s case.
“The Cyprus government has no evidence to prove that these people were al Qaeda or belong to any other terrorist group. We don’t believe this was a genuine security case in Cyprus, none of it makes sense,” he said.
He added that hundreds of Pakistanis had been victimised since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He said last week’s deportation was a typical example of such victimisation.
The 10 Pakistanis studying at Intercollege in Larnaca were arrested on July 7 and deported from the island a few days later, after the Cypriot authorities allegedly received intelligence warning that they were members of a terrorist group.
The men’s lawyer in Cyprus, Sotiris Drakos, said the government had refused to give any evidence supporting its suspicions and had withheld arrest warrants from him. He said he too would be taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Drakos told the Cyprus Mail on the day they were to be deported that he had not even been given the right to see some of the suspects. “The police refused to show me the warrants and then when I demanded to know why my clients had been arrested, detained and issued deportation papers, I was told that they were of ‘undesirable character’,” said Drakos.
“This is not reason enough for deportation,” he added.
