By Syed Raza Hassan
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Officials in several government ministries in Pakistan ran a crime racket that helped to free 15 prisoners convicted of murder and drug offences, Pakistan's interior minister said Tuesday.
The minister's statement is a rare official acknowledgement of the corruption in Pakistan's government and dysfunctional criminal justice system.
"Drug money is involved in this racket. I have given ten days for this inquiry and it will be made public," Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told a news conference.
"Those responsible for this will not sit in the ministry. Their place is jail."
The minister said he had launched an investigation last year after receiving a note from a British minister expressing concern that a prisoner had been freed.
All those freed had been convicted abroad and returned to Pakistan. Four men were found guilty of drug offences and murders in Britain and returned under a prisoner exchange programme.
Nine others were returned after being convicted of drug offences in Thailand; the minister said it was unclear how they returned.
The news that officials were involved in crime will surprise few in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people plagued by crime, militancy and corruption.
But Nisar's vow to publicly hold to account the officials involved was unusually candid for a government that often seems impervious to criticism and slow to reform.
"Those who are part of this mafia as per law we will take them to jail. And this mafia which is not limited to the ministry of interior but is spread in other ministries as well," he said.
Of the four men convicted in Britain, two were recaptured in Pakistan, one in Dubai and one in Ecuador, he said. The nine men arrested in Thailand on drug charges were also recaptured, he said, and would be sent back to Thailand.