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PCOs in NWFP jails closed down to break Taliban contacts

By Akhtar Amin

PESHAWAR: NWFP Inspector General (IG) Prisons Tanveerual Haq Sipra has closed public call offices (PCOs) in the province’s jails as these PCOs were being used by detained Taliban and their commanders to keep regular contacts with their outside leadership, Peshawar Central Jail sources told Daily Times on Thursday.

The former Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) government had opened PCOs in the province’s central prisons including Peshawar, Haripur and Dera Ismail Khan for prisoners to have contacts with their families.

However, in the past three years more than 200 Taliban including their leaders were arrested during military operations in Swat, Buner, Lower Dir, and Bajaur, Mohmand and Waziristan agencies and brought to the province’s jails.

Sources said that detained Taliban and their commanders used to make regular telephone calls from prisons’ PCOs to their outside leadership. The issue was brought into the notice of IG Prisons who imposed ban on PCOs in prisons some four days back for jails’ security.

The jail sources said that currently 116 Taliban including Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) Chief Sufi Mohammad were imprisoned in the Peshawar Central Jail, and about 80 Taliban prisoners were shifted to Dera Ismail Khan and Haripur central prisons. They said that Taliban leadership had warned the Peshawar jail authorities of dire consequences for shifting Taliban from Peshawar prison to other prisons of the province.

“They had also warned the jail authorities of dire consequences if they tortured detained Taliban or treated them badly,” the sources further said.

The sources said that the IG Prisons had also directed the jails authorities to completely ban use of mobile phones by prisoners. It is said that the inmates were using various tricks to keep their mobile phones and bribing the jail officials to skip body-search.

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