Welcoming more criminals

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal’s green light to formalise an extradition treaty with several major world players is perhaps a move in the right direction. However, a dichotomy exists with regard to the pros and cons of such a treaty. Although the FIA believes that the treaty should transform Pakistan’s image into a positive one, there are practices at home that need to be changed to improve confidence in the country. To understand the intricacies, one must recognise that Pakistan is a conduit for repatriated citizens who have committed crimes and offences abroad, to abscond from the law of the foreign land they inhabited.

Among the several cons, we know from history that clean chits are too frequently offered to prisoners. Furthermore, criminals taken in from abroad could be permitted to face consequences that do not fit the gravity of their crimes abroad. In other cases, due process of law has been shoddy where vigilante justice becomes glorified despite the existence of the Pakistan Penal Code. Our legal system is unreliable at times so we have low trust that justice will be served. Therefore, countries in which the crimes are committed should be given the opportunity to deal justice their own way as it was their laws that were flouted in the first place. A person who moves to a new country should learn to be a law-abiding resident as a requirement and realise that one cannot simply escape accountability.

For high-profile criminals who have committed crimes in Pakistan and then fled the country, the treaty brings hope that Pakistan can try the criminals according to its own laws — so long as due process is exercised. This is also necessary because being the country where the crime occurred, Pakistani law-enforcement agencies will have the complete picture, whereas foreign law-enforcement agencies would have to piece evidence together, potentially slowing down the process. It is prudent to have an extradition treaty in place, but it is most pertinent to focus on having criminals face the consequences.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2018.

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