Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif on Wednesday approved death sentences of five “hardcore terrorists”, according to a statement issued by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).The condemned terrorists include persons involved in the attack and subsequent breakout from Bannu Jail, attacking police officials in Gadap town near Karachi, destroying a girls school in Khyber agency and an attack on a polio vaccination team, said a statement released by the ISPR.This is the second approval of death sentences by the army chief following Supreme Court’s recent judgment giving legal cover to the establishment of military courts in the country. One of the issue with Military courts has been under severe criticism and that is the right to appeal. The right to appeal any court’s decision is a universal and fundamental right, and this should encourage more accountability of the military courts on matters of due process. Already we have seen this kind of judicial review bear fruit in the case of Haider Ali, whose execution has been stayed by the Peshawar High Court because he was only 14 at the time of his arrest and was held in secrecy for years without being informed of the charges against him. The rumoured internment sites where evidence is obtained through torture should make the evidence inadmissible as evidence obtained under duress can hardly be reliable. The checks and balances of the right to review therefore is a step in the right direction in terms of the credibility of the military courts, which are by virtue of their closed proceedings opaque. The secrecy however is arguably an essential component of the specially set up military courts, since the openness of the regular judicial system means that judges, prosecutors and investigators were in the crosshairs of the terrorists with the judgements influenced due to the threats to their lives and therefore many terrorists walked free. But the nature of the military courts, essential or not, remains problematic as by their very nature we cannot expect them to offer fair trials. Thus we are wilfully condoning potential miscarriages of justice. The winning argument in favour of military courts, and one repeated by the civilian leadership often, is that the 21st amendment is only a temporary arrangement to deal with terrorists while the judicial system with all its cracks and inadequacies is reformed. Hence the inclusion of the ‘sunset clause’ of two years in the amendment, which would see the military courts lapse come 2017, but, and this is a big but, only if the regular judicial system has been fixed in the meantime. To date we have not witnessed any sincere efforts on the part of the sitting government to undertake the promised judicial reforms that will make the perceived need for military courts redundant. If such inaction keeps up, 2017 will come and go and the military courts and the flagrant continuation of dubious justice will continue. The embracing of this arbitrary arrangement by both the public and the political class has put Pakistan on a slippery slope from which it will be difficult to recover.
pk.shafaqna.com
