Court bails out convict, terror suspect

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) bailed out a man convicted on terrorism charges.

A division bench comprising Justice Ikramullah Khan and Justice Musarrat Hilali ordered the release on bail of a convict Asif Khan hailing from Bara in Khyber tribal district. Farhadullah Afridi, the counsel for the convict, submitted before the bench that the security forces had picked him up in 2015 on suspicion of having links with a militant organisation.

In 2016, he said, the forces handed him over to the authorities in Bara. The Assistant Political Agent Bara, now called assistant commissioner, in the light of a report of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) awarded him four years sentence under sections121, 121-A read with 11 Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) in 2018.

The lawyer pointed out before the court that the assistant commissioner awarded punishment to the convict under FCR, while the tribal districts were being run under Fata Interim Governance Regulation 2018, which was illegal and against the law. He requested the court to suspend the conviction and release the appellant on bail.

The same bench ordered the release on bail of another terror suspect Abdur Rehman belonging to the Mohmand tribal district. He was suffering from tuberculosis. Afrasiab Gul Kakakhel, counsel for the suspect, submitted that the appellant was picked up by the agencies in 2012 on suspicion of having links with militants and handed over to authorities in 2017. He submitted that the appellant, who had done his masters in Islamiat, was picked up by the agencies. The lawyer informed the bench that the detainee was first kept for five years in detention and then handed over to authorities without any charges. He said that the detainee was now suffering from TB and needed urgent treatment.