ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court accepted on Thursday an offer of a witness to record evidence from abroad via video link in the Masood Janjua case and directed its staff to make arrangements for the purpose.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice Jawwad S.

Khawaja that had taken up the case directed Data Processing Manager Umar Suleman to make arrangements within 10 days to record the statement of Dr Imran Munir who lives in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

According to Amina Masood Janjua, who is struggling for the cause of missing persons, including her husband Masood Janjua, Dr Munir had written in a diary that he had heard about a businessman from Rawalpindi who called Janjua in some detention centre at Rawalpindi.

The court issued the directive to make arrangements for recording the statement of Dr Munir when Additional Advocate General of Punjab Razzaq Mirza submitted an email message of the witness containing his offer.

Earlier on court`s directive, the Superintendent of Police, Photohar, Rawalpindi, Haroon Joya, was asked to visit Kandy and meet Dr Munir when the latter declined to share information. During the previous hearing, the Rawalpindi police had submitted a report saying that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had apprised police through a letter of July 25 last year that the high commission in Colombo had tried to get access to Dr Munir through the UNHCR office Sri Lanka.

Police had, however, been told informally that Dr Munirwas living in a UNHCR camp in Kandy as an asylum seeker, the report said.

The Punjab police had told the court that privacy laws and international conventions under which the UNHCR operated did not permit it to share any information about any individual listed with it or the agency for asylum or someone residing inside its campus.

On Thursday, Dr Munir declined in his email message to meet any officer deputed on behalf of the Pakistan government since he did not trust` any of them. He explained that he was a convention refugee under the 1951 United Nations Convention Refugee and its 1967 protocol which protects his life and freedom and he was not subject to expulsion to his country (Pakistan) where he alleged had a fear of persecution.

Similarly, the UN charter does not oblige any orders from any court, federation or institution of any country, including Pakistan. Their core mandate is to protect their convention refugees.

Dr Munir also said that he was not obliged to meet any of the members from the federal government. `And why should I meet anyone and under which capacity since I am no longer a citizen of Pakistan as my citizenship and my passport have been illegally revoked by the interior ministry on behalf of the ISI,` he alleged.

He said he loves Pakistan and respects the Supreme Court which has intervened to find out his whereabouts, therefore, he would give his statement directly before the court.

The court ordered SP Joya to submit his report in a week when he returned from Sri Lanka in four or five days.