Apex court stays execution of two military court convicts
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of two convicts who were awarded death sentence by military courts.
A two-member bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed sought complete record of the case and forwarded a request to the chief justice for constituting larger bench to hear the appeals of the death-row convicts.
According to Asma Jahangir, the counsel for the appellants, military court did not allow her clients named Haider Ali and Qari Gull to have a counsel and did not provide copy of the verdict.
The bench adjourned the hearing till 16th December.
Earlier in October, the Peshawar High Court had upheld the convictions and death sentences awarded to the two 'militants' after it had stayed the execution of both the convicts in August.
The Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan Army, had on Apr 2 announced that the army chief had confirmed convictions and sentences of death awarded to six terrorists.
Laiqa, mother of the convict, Haider Ali had moved the Peshawar High Court in August requesting to declare the “so-called trial” by the military court as illegal and void on different grounds claiming he was a juvenile and remained in illegal detention for six years.
She maintained in the petition that her son was arrested by security forces in 2009 on charges of terrorism, but they did not have any information about him after the arrest.
The convicts mother, filed a writ petition in the high court stating that her son was regular student of 10th grade at Malakand High School, Sarsenai, Kabal tehsil in Swat. She claims that Haider Ali appeared in ninth grade board examination under Roll No.13170 and had obtained 388 out of 525 marks.
The petitioner has also attached attendance sheet of her son stating the he attended his school regularly and had no nexus with any of the militant outfits. According to his school record and birth certificate, the convict was born on Dec 1, 1994, which meant at the time of his alleged arrest in 2009 he was around 15.
It was only recently, six years after Ali's arrest, that she and her husband found out through media reports their son was imprisoned in a jail in Timergara, in Lower Dir district, and was sentenced to death by a military court, the parents said in the application.