Safoora convicts’ pleas against military court verdict questioned

The federal government on Monday questioned the maintainability of the death-row convicts’ petitions before the Sindh High Court (SHC) against the death penalties awarded by a military court in the cases of the Safoora bus carnage and police officials’ martyrdoms.

Saad Aziz, Tahir Hussain Minhas, Mohammad Azhar Ishrat, Hafiz Nasir Ahmed and Asadur Rehman were sentenced to death by a military court for killing 45 members of the Ismaili community and injuring several others in Safoora Goth on May 13, 2015.

The military court, however, did not prosecute three suspected facilitators in the case — Naeem Sajid, Sultan Qamar Siddiqui and Hussain Omar Siddiqui — as the requisite nexus of their alleged offence based on religion or sect was not established to bring them with the pale of the Pakistan Army Act. The military authorities sent back their cases with the request to conduct a speedy trial under the anti-terrorism law.

The federal law officer submitted that the content raised in the petition does not fall within the parameters laid down by the Supreme Court and the petitions were not maintainable under Article 199(3) of the Constitution.

He submitted that trial by the field general court martial was neither mala fide nor without jurisdiction or corum non-judice, so no fundamental rights of the petitioners had been infringed and petitions were not maintainable. The SHC’s division bench headed by Justice Aftab Ahmed Gorar, after taking the comments on record, adjourned the hearing until March 26.

The petitioners’ counsel Hashmat Habib told the high court earlier that his clients were tried before a military court set up in Malir Cantonment under the Army Act as part of the National Action Plan.

He said the appellants were kept at the Karachi Central Jail, where they were provided with the appeal format to file it before the registrar of the Court of Appeals and the judge advocate general of the Army General Headquarters, adding that the appellants were informed of their appeals being rejected on July 25, 2016.

Habib informed the SHC that the convicts later filed their appeals with the Lahore High Court, but they were turned down on October 3, 2016 on the matter of maintainability because the offence was committed and the trial conducted in the jurisdiction of the SHC.

The lawyer argued that the judgment passed by the military court was not maintainable in the eyes of the law because the petitioners should not have been given in the custody of the military authorities and tried under the Pakistan Army (Amendment) Act (Act No II of 2015) or the Protection of Pakistan Act 2014, which now stood expired, as they did not belong to any terrorist organisation or group using the name of religion or sect, raise arms or wage a war against Pakistan, as concluded by a joint investigation team.