JIT members to face hard questions from Sharif family lawyers

ISLAMABAD: The six members of the now-abolished Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT) will be in the witness box at the accountability court if the monitoring judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Ijazul Ahsan, allowed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to record their statements on the findings they prepared.

The NAB has approached the judge with the request that it be permitted to record the statements of the JIT members. It did so after it contacted JIT head Wajid Zia to record his statement but he recommended it to formally seek the permission of the apex court to record his or any other JIT member’s statement.

By now, it is not clear whether one each representative of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) will also be allowed to be in the witness stand because officials of the spy agencies generally stay away from judicial proceedings unless they are ordered by courts to appear. The ISI nominee in the JIT was a retired brigadier while the MI representative was a serving brigadier.

There is and will be no problem in the testimony of Wajid Zia, who belongs to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and officers of the NAB, Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan and State Bank of Pakistan to be in the witness box for cross-examination because they come from civilian organizations. All of them will be prosecution witness meaning they will be produced by the NAB in support of the references that will be primarily based on the JIT report. The lawyers of the Sharif family will call all the JIT members to answer questions about their findings.

For six weeks, the JIT members grilled even the prime minister, his three children, Hussain, Hassan and Maryam, and other influential people when they investigated the matter referred to them by the Supreme Court. Complaints about their harsh attitude with those who appeared before them were galore. Even threats were hurled over some and intimidation was alleged.

Now when they will be in the witness box, they will face hard questioning by the lawyers of the former prime minister and other members of his family. They will be inquired about each and every finding they penned down in their report. It was noted during a reading of the JIT recommendations that some of them were very sweeping; certain conclusions were overboard and several assumptions and presumptions, lacking certainty, were attached too much weight and force to arraign the Sharif family.

The JIT members will also be required to justify in the accountability court each and every allegation contained in their recommendations. Additionally, questions will be asked about the authenticity of many documents they included in their report.

The Sharif family’s lawyers are likely to pray to the accountability court to summon all those foreigners who issued or signed the documents, figuring in the JIT report, and the law firm that authenticated some papers. The “source reports” contained in the JIT recommendations will also have to be justified otherwise they will be of no legal value.

Legal experts say such reports lack any evidentiary weight unless those who issued them come before the court, verify them on oath and face cross-examination from the defence team. It is for the court to accept or reject their view, they add.

In a nutshell, everybody who contributed to the JIT recommendations in any way will be called by the attorneys of the accused for answering questions, which are expected to be innumerable considering the importance of the people facing the references. Experts on the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999, say every claim, allegation and assertion made by the JIT in its recommendations will have to be proved against the accused by its members beyond a shadow of doubt otherwise their case will fall flat.

They expressed the view that the accountability court will order summoning of all the people the respondents’ attorneys will demand to prove the references wrong. It is mandatory for fair trial and under the Constitution and NAO, they say.

It was often alleged that the JIT held one-sided proceedings during its investigations and founded its findings on documents that were kept out of the sight of members of the Sharif family. While they were not confronted with these accusations, the team made ‘definite’ conclusions in its report.

During their arguments, the Sharif family’s lawyers brought this fact to the notice of the Supreme Court more than once that the ‘evidence’ that became the basis of some findings of the JIT was not even cursorily mentioned to the respondents during their interviews.

While the JIT’s recorded, video-taped proceedings were held in-camera in which its members did what their wisdom guided them to do and they were answerable to none in the closed doors, the accountability court hearings will be open where the questions asked by the lawyers and answers given by its members will be public, providing to the people at large a complete picture of the whole affair. This will also reflect the quality of the JIT report and the capacity of its members to undertake such a high profile task.