By Kevin M. Mathewson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan –The Lahore High Court (LHC) in Pakistan has ordered the government to produce an anti-drone activist, Kareem Khan, whose lawyers say was detained by the country’s intelligence agencies.

Kahn, whose teenage son and brother were killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan Agency in 2009, went missing days before he was due to testify to the impacts of the CIA-operative unmanned strikes in Pakistan’s troubled northwest border.

Since the death of his son and brother, Kahn has waged a legal battle against the United States.

His lawyers say he was picked up from his residence in Rawalpindi last week and has not been heard from since. Police deny any involvement.

Britain-based rights group Amnesty International, citing the eyewitnesses, has claimed that the Kareem Khan was picked up by a dozen men, some of whom were wearing police uniforms while others were in civilian clothes, on February 5.

“The Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court has sought reply from the intelligence agencies through the government, ordering the intelligence agencies to produce Kareem Khan on 20 February or give the reason behind his arrest in writing to the court,” his lawyer Shahzad Akbar told AFP news agency.

A decade after they first took to the skies over Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, U.S. drone aircraft’s are causing fierce controversy in both the United States and Pakistan.

U.S. officials argue the drone attacks are vital in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants based in the border area of Pakistan and that they take “extraordinary care” to ensure the strikes comply with international law.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called for an end to drone attacks in his country, saying the attacks violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Several thousand people have been killed in the attacks, many of them militants – but precise numbers and the identities of victims are in dispute because local claims of the numbers of civilian deaths are almost impossible to prove.

For more information, please see:

BBC News – Pakistan court order over missing activist Kareem Khan – 12 February 2014

The Frontier Post – Pakistan court order over missing activist Kareem Khan – 12 February 2014

Al Jazeera – Pakistan pressed over missing drone activist – 12 February 2014

Pakistan Tribune – LHC Orders to Produce Missing Anti-Drone Activist on February 20 – 12 February 2014