Law officer told to provide copy of federal govt’s comments to Safoora carnage convicts’ lawyer

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday directed a federal law officer to provide copies of comments to the counsel of death row convicts of the Safoora bus attack and police officials’ killings cases who had challenged their death sentences by a military court.

Saad Aziz, Tahir Hussain Minhas, Mohammad Azhar Ishrat, Hafiz Nasir Ahmed and Asadur Rehman had been 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 court was informed that the petitioners’ counsel was engaged before the Supreme Court and the adjournment of the hearing was sought on his behalf.

The SHC observed that copies of the comments had not been supplied to the petitioners’ counsel and directed the law officer to provide the same during course of the day. The court directed that its order be complied with so that it could proceed with the matter on the next hearing. The SHC also directed the counsel to satisfy the court about the maintainability of the petitions and adjourned the hearing till September 17.

The petitioners’ counsel, Hashmat Habib, had earlier submitted to the SHC that the judgment passed by the military court was not maintainable in the eyes of 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.

The lawyer had contended that the petitioners were illegally tried and that too in the absence of a counsel in violation of the Article 10-A of the Constitution, as they were also kept incommunicado during the trial and investigations, and due to this, their conviction was liable to be set aside.

Habib had claimed that the petitioners’ right to fair trial under the Article 10-A had also been violated, adding that the Supreme Court had also held in one case that an accused’s request to meet his family could not be denied. He said the apex court had remanded back the petitions of many convicts, who had challenged their conviction by military courts, to the relevant high courts on the same reasons.

The federal government submitted in comments that the content raised in the petitions did not fall within parameters laid down by the Supreme Court and the petitions were not maintainable under the Article 199(3) of the Constitution. The federal attorney submitted that trial by field general court martial was neither mala fide nor without jurisdiction or corum non-judice hence no fundamental rights of the petitioners had been infringed upon and the petitions were not maintainable.