LAHORE, Nov 12: A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday dismissed a writ petition seeking the court intervention to staying the execution of Mir Aimal Kasi by the US.

The short order was conveyed to newsmen waiting for the announcement of the verdict at the court of Justice Tassaduq Husain Jilani by a court official after 3pm with the remarks that detailed judgment would be available on Wednesday (today).

Arguing his case for the high court’s intervention to prevent execution of Kasi in the US earlier in the day, petitioner’s counsel Javed Iqbal Jaffery submitted that he could defend Kasi in the light of new evidence which had come to light recently in case the high court helped stay his execution by administering a lethal injection.

He submitted that Kasi had been arrested by the Pakistani forces during the tenure of prime minister Nawaz Sharif from Dera Ghazi Khan in 1997 and handed over to the American agencies without any extradition proceedings of any kind. No FIR had been registered against Kasi in Dera Ghazi Khan or anywhere else in Pakistan.

He contended that Kasi had been abducted by the US agencies in violation of the fundamental rights of the Pakistani citizens and the 1959 Pakistan-US treaty under which both countries had agreed not to molest each other’s citizens.

He submitted that Kasi had been taken to Virginia, known as a butcher state, and forced to confess a crime he had not committed under the influence of drugs. The US state did not provide him a good lawyer to defend himself. Kasi, being a poor man, did not have the resources to engage a good lawyer himself.

He contended that the high court should come to the rescue of Kasi by approaching the US government and state of Virginia on the ground that he had not been extradited to the US in accordance with the law. Moreover, new evidence had come to light that Kasi had been drugged to confess to committing the crime.

He argued that the high court could intervene like South Africa had got execution of Falkan Khamas Muhammad stopped by the US on the ground that no agreement to execute each other’s citizens existed between the two states. The South African government got the execution stopped despite the fact that Falkan was a Tanzanian national arrested in that country and had been extradited to the US after meeting necessary formalities.

Advocate Jaffery said he had filed a petition for the release of Kasi and former chief justice Allah Nawaz had confided to him in a private meeting that “he was under tremendous pressure” for dismissing the case. The file of the case remained missing during the tenure of former chief justice Falak Sher and the case was not fixed for hearing despite the fact that he filed 15 motions for the purpose. Former deputy attorney-general Khwaja Saeeduz Zafar had once proposed referring Kasi’s case to the International Court of Justice.