Deputy Attorney General Shah Khawar filed one petition on behalf of the federal government while Advocate General Raza Farooq submitted the second for the Punjab government. The petitions were resubmitted after removing the technical flaws pointed out by the apex court on Monday.

The fresh petitions challenge the release of Saeed and his close aides Col (retd) Nazir Ahmed, Amir Hamza and Mufti Abdur Rehman from house arrest. Saeed and Ahmed were released on the orders of the Lahore High Court on June 2 while Hamza and Rehman were freed by a judicial review board a month earlier. The original petitions filed by the federal and Punjab governments were rejected by the office of the Supreme Court registrar as they challenged only the release of Saeed and Ahmed. The office of the registrar said Hamza and Rehman -- who were originally party to the matter -- should also be included in the petitions.

Deputy Attorney General Shah Khawar said the federal government was "not satisfied with the judgement of the High Court" that freed Saeed as the relevant law regulating preventive detention was not "properly appreciated." "Another important ground is that the resolution of the United Nations Security Council (declaring the JuD a terrorist organisation) has not been properly interpreted and we believe that was also a sufficient ground for the detention," he told reporters.

The federal government's petition also said the High Court had "not considered the sensitivity of the case" in the context of Pakistan's ongoing campaign against "internal and external terrorism."

The petition said the government had "classified information which could be made the basis of (a) detention order." The government's action appeared to be aimed at clearing the air before meetings of the Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt later this month.