In the current political climate of almost daily violence in Pakistan it takes a bit of guts for anyone to confront the government, let alone its feared intelligence service, which is virtually a law unto itself. But the woman you're about to meet is fuelled by righteous anger. She's searching for her husband, one of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Pakistanis who've just disappeared in the so-called war on terror. Here's Sophie McNeill in Islamabad.
REPORTER: Sophie McNeill
Pakistan's crowded streets hold many secrets. In this dusty office block, 42-year-old Amina Janua is trying to unlock the mystery of what happened to her husband, Masood.
AMINA JANUA (Translation): Yes we will be there, and when the placards are ready,then we will go to Parliament House.
Over 3.5 years ago Masood went out for the day and never came back.
AMINA JANUA: I felt very uncomfortable that day. I wished I could stop him and bring him back home and tell him, "Please don't go today." I don't know why I was feeling that way. I never felt it before. So that was the day I saw him last.
Amina's husband is a businessman who ran a travel agency and a computing school. The day he went missing Masood had planned to take a bus to the nearby city of Peshawar, but to this day Amina doesn't know if he got there.
AMINA JANUA: We started searching desperately everywhere. We thought maybe it's an accident or something, so we searched all the hospitals in Peshawar, we searched all the places of human rights, NGOs, where things can be reported, any sudden accident has happened.
Finally, after days of searching, Amina received a message through an intermediary. Masood had been picked up by the ISI, Pakistan's most feared intelligence agency.
AMINA JANUA: I can't think of any reason behind this. This has been a routine practice for the government for the last 10 years now and I had no knowledge that this was happening until it happened to me. That people are being picked up like mysteriously and then there is no news about them. They are simply lost.
After 3.5 years, there is still no official explanation for his disappearance.
AMINA JANUA (Translation): If you have any friends in the media please forward my message to them.
Amina has now devoted herself to uncovering exactly what happened to her husband, and the hundreds, and possibly thousands, of other Pakistanis being illegally detained. She has set up a protest group and today she's getting ready for one of their regular demonstrations.
AMINA JANUA: I use this colour orange because of the orange uniform of Guantanamo. So what's written here is that they are Pakistani 'Gitmos' and they should be closed. And what I mean by Pakistani 'Gitmos' is that there are 300 illegal detention centres existing in Pakistan.
With the posters ready, it's time to head off to the protest. It's not easy to speak out in a country like Pakistan. Intimidated by the intelligence agencies, Amina initially thought it was best to work quietly to try and secure her husband's release.
AMINA JANUA: For one year I was engaged with meeting people, like ministers and army people and president, and all.
But there was still no official news of Masood. So Amina decided the only way forward was to protest publicly.
AMINA JANUA: I was forced to do something more so the world would know what happened to me and how all rights are violated, how my children are suffering, how I am desperate for my husband. We started with one family - that is my family - but very soon, within days, we were joined by other families who were also looking for their loved one.
Amina is first to arrive outside Parliament House in central Islamabad.
AMINA JANUA (Translation): They have barricaded the other side, let’s go over there then, that’s looks open, let’s set up a stall there.
REPORTER: Mrs Janjua, what's with all the police? Why are they here?
AMINA JANUA: They have come here for us.
REPORTER: For you?
AMINA JANUA: Yes. Maybe not to protect us, but to stop us from going to the Parliament.
Other families of missing people soon arrive, each with their own tale of a desperate search for answers.
MAN (Translation): I know a lot of people have died, but I know for sure that my son is alive. And I’ve heard from different areas that he is still alive. I feel it is the work of the agency people.
An intelligence officer is watching closely, but these people are determined to carry on. This woman, Zahida Sharif, was eight months pregnant when her husband, Abed, disappeared in September 2005. Her 3-year-old son, Zaifa, has never met his father. Later, at her home, Zahida tells me that when her husband Abed – a doctor at a local hospital - first went missing, she was fearful that protesting might have terrible consequences.
ZAHIDA SHARIF: We had heard that if we complain these agency people, they torture more the person they have.
Zahida believes Abed was targeted by the intelligence agencies because he was deeply religious. But she says he wasn't an extremist.
ZAHIDA SHARIF: Five times prayer he was offering. He had beard. Beard he had. But he wasn't a hardliner. If you say that. He wasn't that.
Zahida blames Western intelligence agencies for pressuring Pakistan to crack down on Islamists and hand them over.
ZAHIDA SHARIF: They were answering, "Do more," and for that "do more", they were capturing innocent people. Innocent people! And they were selling them, or they were giving them. The allegation is al-Qaeda. If he has committed any crime or done something wrong he should be produced in some court so we can face whatever charges he has against him, but nothing, no reason at all.
Here in Pakistan the intelligence service is extremely powerful. In the past, it's made and broken governments and even been implicated in political assassinations. It operates under a cloak of secrecy which human rights groups have been unable to penetrate.
REPORTER: How many people have gone missing in Pakistan since the war on terror began?
MS TAHIRA ABDULLAH, PAKISTAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION: That is a very important question and I wish we knew the exact answer.
Ms Tahira Abdullah is an activist working with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
MS TAHIRA ABDULLAH: They are not sent to regular jails because then the number would be known. We know who is in jail, we know what they are there for. Pakistani jails are open. I can go to any jail and find out what any prisoner is there for. So, therefore, they are kept in secret houses which are called safe houses which belong to intelligence agencies and they are interrogated there and sometimes they are tortured to force confessions out of them.
Amina and her group have decided to take their protest down to the gates of Parliament. Many of these missing relatives disappeared during the rule of the former military dictator General Musharraf. So when Musharraf was ousted in August last year these families placed their hope in Pakistan's new civilian government. But, so far, the members inside this parliament have done little to help - a point not lost on the Pakistani media.
TV REPORTER: What about the parliamentarians? I can see them going into the parliament. They're least bothered, they're not even stopping to look at you? What message would you like to convey to them?
AMINA JANUA: What are they doing sitting inside the parliament? Of course they are representative members and they have come here and obtained their offices with our votes. It's their responsibility to provide relief to the people of Pakistan and act for the human rights causes.
MS TAHIRA ABDULLAH: The new government of the Pakistan People's Party contrary to their manifesto and contrary to their election promises, have just continued with the polices of the former military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf.
Even the government itself admits more should be done. Faratullah Babar is the spokesperson for the President, Asif Ali Zardari.
FARATULLAH BABAR, PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESPERSON: This is one of the areas where a lot more needs to be done. All we can do is - and we have been doing - is to periodically raise our voice.
But it seems the government has little or no control over its own intelligence services.
REPORTER: Who's the call to?
FARATULLAH BABAR: Well, we raised this call publicly.
REPORTER: But who to? Like, if the government makes the call, if you're the government, who are you making the call to?
FARATULLAH BABAR: It is a public commitment. It is a public commitment and anybody and any people who have held them in detention, they get the message.
REPORTER: But, I mean, the government runs the country. Can't it just say, "Release everyone who's being held without charge"?
FARATULLAH BABAR: Well, constitutionally, nobody can be held without charge. Theoretically, yes, if the government says nobody should be held without charge and be released, that is correct in practise. If it doesn't happen, this is one of the bitter realities.
REPORTER: How long are you prepared to keep demonstrating and protesting for?
AMINA JANUA: As long as till the last person is released. Because if my husband is released, and her husband is not released, then our motive is not achieved, because we are working for a safer, beautiful Pakistan, where nobody is picked up ever.
Give me the best card of today, a letter of support.
Amina's struggle has attracted letters of support from all over the world. But the support she craves the most is from the one person who can't be there to help her.
AMINA JANUA: He loved to do the mountaineering and he would just pull me at all heights. I used to say, "No, I don't want to go up there. I'm scared." And he would say, "Why are you scared? I'm with you." So this is the feeling I miss the most when I'm alone. I don't have this kind of, yeah. I really feel that, that he's not with me, today.
Reporter/Camera
SOPHIE McNEILL
Editors
MICAH McGOWN
NICK O’BRIEN
DAVID POTTS
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Translations / Subtitling
AESH RAO
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN