PESHAWAR, July 14: The Commissioner of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) on Thursday commuted the sentence of more than 40 years’ imprisonment awarded to a person by the tribal administration of the Kurram Agency about 15 years ago. Commissioner Jalat Khan ruled that the assistant political agent was not empowered under the FCR to award a sentence of more than 14 years.

The commissioner reduced his sentence to 14 years and also reduced the fine of Rs150,000 to Rs50,000.

The appellant, Tahir Hussain, was charged with possessing explosives. He was sentenced to 14 years rigorous imprisonment on three counts by the assistant political agent (APA) concerned of Upper Kurram on June 30, 1990. The APA had ordered that the sentences should run consecutively and not concurrently, which made his total jail term of 42 years.

The APA had also fined him Rs50,000 on three counts in default of which he had to undergo 12 years of jail in addition to those 42 years. At the time of his arrest, Tahir Hussain was about 18 years old.

The commissioner ordered that the sentences should run on concurrent basis and not consecutively.

Advocate Ilyas Ahmad Qureshi appeared for the appellant and contended that the APA had violated the law by ordering the sentences to run consecutively. He argued that the appellant had already spent about 15 years in jail and if the sentence was maintained he would spend about four decades more in prison.

Mr Qureshi referred to section 12 of the FCR and contended that the APA had no powers to award sentence of more than 14 years imprisonment. He added that the APA had also violated provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Last year, the Voice of Prisoners, an organisation devoted to dealing with rights of prisoners, had filed a writ petition in the Peshawar High Court, praying that direction should be issued to the effect that these sentences should run concurrently.