‘Recalculate term of Musharraf attack plotter’

LAHORE: Lahore High Court on Monday directed prison authorities to recalculate in view of amnesties and remissions awarded to a convict his sentence for plotting an attack on former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf in 2003.

Justice Shahid Hameed Dar asked the authorities concerned to fix a date of his release based on the revised prison term. He issued the directive in a petition challenging the detention of one Adnan Khan.

Petitioner Saira Khan, mother of the convict, submitted that he had served his sentence and was now being held illegally. She said the authorities had been delaying his release without any justification.

Petitioner’s counsel Advocate Mujahid Waseem said a military court had sentenced Khan to a 15-year term in 2003. He said the court had not given him any benefit in terms of reduction in prison term allowed under Section 382-B of the Criminal Procedures Code (CrPC).

The counsel said his client had approached Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench seeking remedy allowed under this section. The petition had been dismissed, he said. Later, an intra-court appeal submitted with an LHC division bench had been accepted and prison authorities directed to extend the relief allowed under the law to his client.

Advocate Waseem said that the government’s appeal against this decision was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. However, he said, the authorities concerned had yet to issue release orders for his client. He requested the court to issue directives for the prison authorities to release his client.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2016.