Revamp of criminal justice system still a pipe dream

Political forces neither revamped justice system nor want to revive military courts

ISLAMABAD: The military courts – formed for the speedy trial of hardcore terrorists in the wake of Dec 2014 massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar – reached the end of their two-year tenure last week.

However, during these two years, neither the political forces made any solid attempt to revamp the existing criminal justice system – as was required under the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism – nor they are now showing any willingness to revive the military courts.

Talking to The Express Tribune, defence analysts say the political leadership – by revamping the criminal justice system – could have established an alternative system for military courts. However, all the political parties including the ruling party did nothing substantive in this regard.



Brigadier (retd) Said Nazir Mohmand said the criminal justice system has several flaws and these shortcomings could not be bridged through anti-terrorism courts (ATCs).

He said the military courts via the 21st amendment in the Constitution were empowered to conduct speedy trials of terrorists under the objective requirements of 2015 but no effort was made to revamp the criminal justice system.

“It was required to set up a system under which linkages of terrorism could be exposed and their networks could be busted after nailing terrorists through efforts of security agencies.”

He said a system was supposed to be adopted in which criminals could not get away from punishment on account of flaws in judicial proceedings.

“Criminal investigation also was supposed to be adopted on scientific basis besides making the system transparent. However, nothing could be achieved due to lack of political will,” he said.



Mohmand said first the political stakeholders, due to their own vested interests, linked terrorism only with seminaries and excluded the terrorism that exists due to ethnic and nationalistic ideologies.

He said the idea of linking terrorism only with seminaries restricted the law itself in its implementation. He said two years were sufficient to introduce a law as well as to train human resources, establish forensic labs and to improve coordination amongst the law enforcement agencies.

However, he said, some political parties are afraid of introducing such a law due to presence of militant wings in their ranks. He said they are willing neither to improve the criminal justice system nor to revive the military courts.

“Religious parties stand on one side, the liberal parties stand on the opposite end while the ruling PML-N stands somewhere in between,” Mohmand remarked.

Picking out flaws in the current judicial system, another defense analyst Brigadier (retd) Farooq Hameed said a few months back a massive cache of arms was recovered in Azizabad area of Karachi. However, he said, the law enforcers could not present evidences in the court to bring the culprits to justice.

He said the ATA in its present form is not delivering results with regard to hardcore terrorism.

“The ruling party wants to maintain status quo and doesn’t want drastic changes in the system as it will empower forces to conduct operations in Punjab on the pattern of Karachi operation,” he said.

He said the PML-N believes that the era of General (retd) Raheel Sharif – who had his own vision and style – is over while the new military command would have its own approach towards these issues.

According to him, revival of military courts is not acceptable to the PPP because neither it could get relief from the military establishment nor from the ruling PML-N for people like Dr Asim Hussain, Owais Muzzaffar Tappi, model Ayyan and Layari gang war kingpin Uzair Baloch.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2017.