13 mount appeal against military court conviction

Thirteen Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers, who were convicted by the field general court martial (FGCM), have appealed against the punishment awarded to them and moved the applications for the provision of documents, relevant to their cases.

The applications have been filed by their lawyers, Rana Abdul Qayyum Advocate and Malik Tahir Advocate. Currently, these 13 convicts are lodged in the Adiala Jail following the announcement of the military court verdict last month.

The have filed the application with the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Department of the military, requesting for the provision of summary evidence, military court proceedings, charge-sheet, military court sentence warrant, copies of the verdicts and other relevant documents.

In the appeals and applications, a request has also been made for arranging a meeting of all these convicts with their families and lawyers.

Among them, Umar Farooq, Dawood Khan, Ahsanullah Khan, Muhammad Anwar Khan, Babar Jamal Khan, and Raja Muhammad Ahsan have been awarded 10-year prison term each; Syed Hassan Shah got 9 years; Faheem Sajjad 8 years; Farhad Khan and Ali Hassan 7 seven years each; and Raja Danish, Muhammad Abdullah, Muhammad Bilala have been given four years jail term each.

The defence lawyers confirmed on wednesday that appeals and petitions of those convicts had been filed. They said that if they were not provided the documents they had applied for, they would move the high court to obtain them.

Separately, a civilian employee and a corporal of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), who were convicted by the FGCM on charges of embezzlement and violation of the Official Secrets Act, have challenged their convictions in the military court of appeal.

On December 31, 2024, a military court sentenced Mazhar Hayat Bhatti, a technician at the PAF Hospital in Islamabad, to one year imprisonment for embezzling CT Scan test injections. After the sentence, convict Bhatti was transferred to Adiala Jail.

Corporal Tech Sohail Rashid was arrested in Skardu and on December 26, 2024, he was sentenced to three years and 6 months imprisonment under Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act. Currently, he had been lodged in the Peshawar Jail.

Defence lawyer Rana Abdul Qayyum Advocate had filed the appeal against the conviction of Bhatti. He took the plea that a civilian could not be court martialed. He had also filed another application, seeking relevant documents of the case.