Safoora carnage, Sabeen’s murder: SHC seeks comments in case of convicts challenging death sentence

Attorney general and prosecutor-general to file comments by Jan 26

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) directed on Monday the additional attorney general and the provincial prosecutor-general to file comments on petitions of five convicts challenging death sentence awarded to them by the military court in cases related to Safoora Goth carnage and activist Sabeen Mehmood's murder.

A two-judge bench, headed by Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh, directed the federal law officer and top provincial prosecutor to file comments by January26. The Islamic State-inspired group of youths had shot dead around 45 members of the Ismaili community in the outskirts of Karachi in May, 2015.

A military court had awarded capital punishment in the case to Saad Aziz alias Tin Tin, Tahir Hussain Minhas alias Sain, Asadur Rehman alias Malik, Mohammad Azhar Ishrat alias Majid and Haniz Nasir Ahmed on May 12, last year.

However, the court had acquitted three others - former Fishermen Cooperative Society deputy director Sultan Qamar Siddiqui, his younger brother, Muhammad Hussain Siddiqui, and Naeem Sajid - of the charges of facilitating the massacre.

The five convicts filed their appeals through Advocate Hashmat Ali Habib, who argued that the petitioners were tried before the military court, which was set up at the Malir cantonment under the Army Act, as part of Islamabad's National Action Plan.

The petitioners were kept in Karachi's central prison where they were provided with an appeal format to be filed before the Registrar Court of Appeals, Judge Advocate-General of the General Headquarters of Army, said Advocate Habib.

He informed the judges that on August 15, last year, the appellants were informed that their appeals had been rejected on July 25. They moved appeals in the Lahore High Court, which on October 3, 2016, also turned it down on the matter of maintainability as the offence and the trial were conducted within the jurisdiction of SHC.

Advocate Habib argued that the conviction judgment passed by the military court was not maintainable in the eyes of law as the petitioners could have not been in custody of the military authorities and tried under the Pakistan Army Amendment Act (Act-II of 2015) or the Protection of Pakistan Act, 2014, which now stands expired. Further, the petitioners did not belong to any terrorist organisation or terrorist group using the name of religion or sect or raised arms or wage war against Pakistan as decided by a joint investigation team.

He contended that the petitioners were illegally tried and that, too, in the absence of any counsel, which was a violation of Article 10 of the Constitution, as they were also kept incommunicado during their trial and investigation. Thus, their conviction is liable to be set aside, he added.

The lawyer claimed that the petitioners' right to fair trial under Article 10-A had also been violated and that the Supreme Court had also held in one case that an accused cannot be denied meeting with family under Note 7 that was added to Section 73 of the Pakistan Army Act.

Therefore, advocate Habib pleaded that the court should set aside the petitioners' sentences and acquit them.

Earlier this month, another division bench had issued notices to the federal and provincial lawyers and prosecutor-general to file comments by January 16.

On Monday, the matter was fixed before another bench, headed by Justice Sheikh, who ordered issuing notices to the additional attorney general and prosecutor-general for comments by January 26.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2017.