- Pakistan's spy agency is ordered to hand over seven detainees
- The ISI blames Abdul Saboor's death on natural causes
- The Supreme Court wants the ISI to explain the deaths and alleged detentions
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's Supreme Court gave the country's secretive and powerful spy agency a midnight deadline to hand over seven detainees who were allegedly arrested without due process and injured while in its custody, a lawyer representing several of the detainees told CNN Friday.
A three-judge panel delivered the ultimatum after a lawyer representing the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, failed to bring the detainees to court as earlier ordered.
"The court wants the detainees in court today and they're not accepting any excuses," said attorney Tariq Asad. "The court has said they have until midnight to produce the detainees, even if it means bringing them to court in a helicopter."
The court did not make clear what the consequences would be if ISI failed to produce the detainees by the end of the day.
Long thought to be untouchable, the spy agency has been ordered to produce the men it's accused of holding since 2010 and explaining the deaths of four other detainees.
Pakistani mom takes on spy agency On Thursday, the spy agency's lawyer presented the court with medical certificates for four of them to show they were hospitalized, and he asked permission from the court to present confidential letters explaining the whereabouts of the other three men, Asad said.
One of the dead detainees is Abdul Saboor. The ISI blamed the 29-year-old's death on natural causes, but his mother said scars on his body prove the agency tortured and killed her son.
"He had so many marks on his body," Rohaifa Bibi said, pointing to numerous scars in a picture of her son's corpse. "When they showed me the body, he was just skin and bones."
Saboor and his brothers were law abiding citizens who printed Korans at a shop in Lahore, Asad said. He did acknowledge that all of the detainees were suspects in several militant attacks, but said they were acquitted of the charges in 2010.
A lawyer for the ISI told the Supreme Court that the spy agency did detain the men for further questioning but said they were set free. The ISI denies any role in their deaths and holds to its claim that they died of natural causes.
CNN's Nasir Habib contributed to this report
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_world/~3/OOyCrVRjjzc/index.html
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