'Illegally held' Pakistanis freed

By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Islamabad

One of the freed men, Aleem Nasir, embraces his mother

Pakistan's security agencies have released three illegally detained men in time to meet a Supreme Court ruling.

The head of Pakistan's main security agency had been told he faced jail if one of the men was not produced in court by Tuesday.

Hundreds of people have gone missing in Pakistan since 2001.

Human rights agencies say that many are being illegally detained by the security agencies, which often deny any knowledge of their whereabouts.

Missing

Abdul Basit, Aleem Nasir, a German national, and Imran Munir, a Pakistani-Malaysian national, were reunited with their families late on Tuesday.

The missing people's case came into the spotlight in late 2006, when Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry started regular hearings and ordered senior government officials to produce those in illegal detention.

Mr Chaudhry was suspended in March 2007 by President Pervez Musharraf on charges of abuse of power.

But he was reinstated in July after the Supreme Court ruled the suspension to be illegal.

Since then, Mr Chaudhry has restarted his campaign of judicial activism, giving several anti-government judgements in political cases.