More May 9 convictions

The Anti-Terrorism Court's conviction of 47 proclaimed offenders in the May 9 GHQ attack case — including prominent PTI leaders such as Omar Ayub Khan, Shibli Faraz and Murad Saeed — is a moment Pakistan cannot treat as routine. The sentences of ten years each, with fines and property confiscation, represent the most consequential legal reckoning yet.

No honest observer can deny the gravity of what happened on May 9. Attacks on military installations, including GHQ's gates, the Army Museum and Hamza Camp, crossed every conceivable line. A democracy cannot tolerate political violence, regardless of who incites it or what grievances precede it. To that extent, the state deserves the right to pursue accountability. Yet accountability loses its moral authority when it appears one-sided. The 47 were tried in absentia as proclaimed offenders — a legally valid procedure, but one that bypasses the full rigour of adversarial justice.

Not a single prosecution witness in the broader May 9 case has yet been cross-examined. Proceedings have been delayed for months over a non-functional video link. Meanwhile, the broader trial of 118 accused — including Imran Khan himself — crawls forward, hampered by broken video links and months of avoidable delay. Justice that is selectively swift and selectively slow feeds the very grievance politics that brought us to May 9 in the first place. When process is this visibly compromised, verdicts however well-intentioned invite suspicion rather than confidence.

The state must rise above the perception it has itself created. Trials must proceed without procedural manipulation or unnecessary delay. The court's provision allowing the convicts to surrender by May 7 and be re-tried on merit is a sound one — it must be honoured fully and transparently. Justice that flows in only one direction is not justice. It is a settlement of scores that Pakistan can ill afford.