Treason trial: Apex court to take up Dogar’s plea on January 18

Petitioner says apex court in its July 31, 2009 order did not hold him responsible for high treason


Our Correspondent January 15, 2016
PHOTO: AFP

ISLAMABAD: The top court will take up on January 18 former chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar’s plea against the Special Court’s order to investigate his role in promulgation of emergency on November 3, 2007 during General Pervez Musharraf’s rule.

The Supreme Court’s three-judge bench, headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, will hear Dogar’s petition against dismissal of his plea by Islamabad High Court (IHC) on December 9. The IHC, after preliminary hearing, had dismissed the petition as non-maintainable.



The three-judge Special Court – headed by Justice Faisal Arab – on November 27, 2015 directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to investigate the role of various alleged facilitators in imposition of emergency – including Dogar as well as former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and former law minister, Zahid Hamid. Former president Musharraf is the sole accused in the case so far.

The FIA has already started investigation and recording statements of the accused persons

While challenging the IHC order, the petition – moved by Dogar through his counsel Advocate Iftikhar Gillani – said the apex court never held Dogar responsible for high treason in its judgment on July 31, 2009, while deciding a contempt matter and “he was [also] exonerated for the event of 03.11.2007”.

It said there was no material or evidence on the record to connect the petitioner with the alleged crime, adding that under the principle of trichotomy of power, as enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan, the petitioner, as a chief justice of Pakistan, had nothing to do in executive’s functioning.

“It is well settled law through judgments of the top court that the courts cannot interfere with the police or state investigations; neither can they direct them to include or exclude the names of the accused,” the petition said.

It said the IHC has inadvertently overlooked the bias of the Special Court, which is floating on the face of the impugned order as without an iota of evidence or material on the record.

Justice Dogar said the top court had held in its July 31, 2009 judgment that Pervez Musharaf alone imposed the emergency and issued other unconstitutional and illegal instrument and that no one else was his complicit.

“The Impugned Order is clearly violative of Article 10-A of the Constitution, in as much as no person can be arraigned before a court as an accused for a criminal misdemeanor, much less treason, without proper and lawful investigation,” it said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16th, 2016.

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