Seeking justice elsewhere: Police prepare list of cases for military courts

Over 100 high-profile terrorism cases on the list

KARACHI:

Nearly 100 cases of high-profile terrorism cases are likely to be transferred to the military courts to be established in Karachi soon.

Soon after the visit of Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif who approved the increase in the number of military courts in Karachi, the government and military officials became busy implementing the orders. At the same time, law enforcers - especially the police department - sprang into action and started compiling a list of high-profile cases that can be transferred to the military courts for early disposal. According to police officials, their investigators will study the case entirely before it is referred to the military courts. The relevant investigators have been directed to study the cases from all angles.

"Initially, we had prepared a list of 65 high-profile cases of terrorism but now we have to revise our list before sending it to the military courts," said a senior police official, who is privy to the developments. "We have to remove some cases in which the anti-terrorism court has already given its decision and we will add some new cases to the new list," he told The Express Tribune.

Some of the cases that are likely to be referred to the military courts include the April 2006 Nishtar Park bombing in which more than 50 people including Sunni Tehreek leaders, Abbas Qadri and Iftikhar Bhatti and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal leader Hafiz Taqi were killed and nearly a 100 injured. The bomb had exploded near the stage where the political leaders were offering Maghrib prayers on the occasion of Rabiul Awal 12.

In 2009, the anti-terrorism courts indicted three suspects, all of whom belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, in the Nishtar Park bombing, the disposal of the case has yet to take place. Other cases likely to be referred are the attacks on the Dawoodi Bohra community, the Chehlum and Ashura blasts, the planted bomb blast in Abbas Town, the Baldia factory fire, twin bombings on the convoy of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the bomb that killed SP Chaudhry Aslam and various high-profile target killings of Professor Sibte Jafar, Professor Dr Shakeel Auj, Dr Waheedur Rehman, Jafaria Alliance Pakistan chief Allama Abbas Kumaili's son, Mufti Naeem's son-in-law and the attack on Jinnah Medical and Dental College vice-principal Dr Debra Lobo.

"The new list will be prepared soon and then it will be sent to the provincial government through the home department," explained a police official. "Then, the government will decide which cases will be transferred to the military courts  and which will stay with the anti-terrorism courts."

Sindh IG Ghulam Hyder Jamali also pointed out that the police department has decided to refer those cases to the military courts that the suspects in the Safoora bus carnage have confessed involvement in. "In just the Safoora bus attack investigations, the police have found the involvement of the arrested men in at least 39 other cases of terrorism," he told The Express Tribune. "These cases will also be added to the new list and [the cases] will be transferred to the military courts."

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2015.