"It Was a Grave Like Prison Cell"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2007/10/071022_sarki_court_zs.shtml (English Translation)
Nisar Khokhar, Sukkur, Sindh for bbcUrdu.com
Monday, 22 October, 2007, 20:07 GMT 01:07 PST

Sindh’s nationalist leader Dr. Safdar Sarki in his court testimony said that he has not gone missing for the last eighteen months, but was in the custody of Pakistan’s secret service agencies.

On Monday in judicial magistrate of Hub, Abdul Qayum Baloch’s court; while getting his statement recorded Dr. Safdar Sarki said that on 24th February 2006, he was taken in custody by plain dressed secret service agents in Karachi.

Sohail Memon, one of the lawyers of the team representing Safdar Sarki, told BBC that in Sarki’s statement; he informed the court that the secret service agencies had been keeping him incarcerated in secret, grave like narrow and dark prison cells of Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, and the decision to free him has been taken after the missing person hearings at the Supreme Court.

Jeay Sindh National Front named nationalist party’s leader told the court that Dr Sarki was treated illegally while in custody, against which he staged a four month long hunger strike. In his statement he said that during his time in custody he was also under treatment at a military hospital for a year.

Just a reminder, before the 11th October Supreme Court’s missing person hearings, three nationalist leaders of Sindh including Dr. Sarki were arrested again by police for various different cases after they were released from the secret prisons.

After recording Sarki’s testimony, judicial court has sent him back to Gadani jail. Sarki’s next court hearing is on the 24th October in the local Hub court.