Three Pakistani men allegedly arrested by security forces when they disappeared a year ago were found dead Thursday after authorities ordered that they be produced alive in court, police said.The case spotlights the plight of the "missing" in Pakistan, where judges are seeking to bring the powerful military and intelligence agencies to book over mass arrests of alleged terror suspects, who are never seen again.
According to a preliminary autopsy report, the three men aged 30 to 35 were recently killed -- first poisoned, then their necks were broken.
Their bodies were discovered in the district of Haripur, part of the northwest where the army has been fighting to put down a Taliban insurgency. "The dead bodies were recovered from three different places," Mohammad Ali Gandapur, district police chief, said.
He said police were investigating who killed them and why.
Relatives of one of the victims told police he was arrested by security forces and had been missing for 11 months, Gandapur said.
Footage broadcast by private TV channel Geo showed the bodies being taken away by ambulance, accompanied by relatives and rescue workers. A senior police official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the victims had been arrested by intelligence agencies.
An unnamed relative told Geo that the victims were three of 170 missing people ordered to be produced court by judges in the northwestern capital Peshawar. --