PHC suspends military court’s death sentence to convict

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday suspended the decision of a military court that had awarded death sentence to an alleged militant Haider Ali.
Haider Ali was one of the six convicts sentenced to death in April by a military court on terrorism charges in the wake of the Army Public School Peshawar attack.
A two-member bench comprising Justice Musarrat Hilali and Justice Muhammad Younas Thaheem suspended the decision and halted the death sentence awarded to the convict by a military court till September 8 when the next hearing in the case will take place.
The bench also issued notices to the federal government through the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defence through its secretary and also to the federal law secretary, directing them to provide complete record of the case and the basis on which the convict was awarded death sentence.
Bacha Laiqa, mother of Haider Ali, had filed the petition in the PHC against his conviction. She had requested the court to declare the trial by the military court as illegal and void on different grounds as he was a juvenile at the time of his arrest and then remained in illegal detention for six years.
She stated in the petition that her son was a regular student of 10th grade at the Malakand High School in Sarsenai village in Kabal Tehsil in Swat. She claimed that Haider Ali appeared in the ninth grade examination and obtained 388 marks out of 525. The petitioner also attached the attendance sheet of her son stating that he attended his school regularly and had no nexus with the militants.
According to his school record and birth certificate, Haider Ali was born on December 1, 1994, which meant he was around 15 years old at the time of his arrest in 2009.
Counsel for the petitioner, Malik Muhammad Ajmal, submitted before the bench that the military court had sentenced the petitioner’s son Haider Ali to death in April in the wake of the Army Public School attack.
He said Haider Ali was a juvenile when he was allegedly handed over to security forces in 2009.
To the court’s query, the lawyer replied that it was not specified under what charges Haider Ali and the other convicts were tried and where the trial took place as there was no record about the trial and charges against them.
The petitioner, Bacha Laiqa, stated that as per the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000 there was no death punishment for any crime committed by a juvenile nor joint trial was allowed and only the juvenile court was competent to try any juvenile offender for any crime, but in the instant case no such procedure was adopted by the authorities concerned.
The six suspects Haider Ali, Noor Saeed, Murad Khan, Inayatullah, Israruddin and Qari Zahir were condemned to death on April 2 by the military courts, which were established after the passage of the 21st Amendment and subsequent amendments to the Army Act.
The said amendments were challenged in the Supreme Court, which dismissed all
the petitions against it on August 5.
The respondents in the petition are the Federation of Pakistan through Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defence through its secretary, federal law secretary, provincial home secretary, Chief of Army Staff at GHQ, Peshawar corps commander, general officer commanding for Malakand Division stationed at Khwazakhela in Swat and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa inspector general of prisons.