ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan Nasirul Mulk has called an extraordinary meeting of the chief justices of the superior judiciary on Wednesday to discuss cases pending in anti-terrorism courts (ATC).

The meeting has been called a day after the chief justice expressed resolve at a condolence reference in the Peshawar High Court to ensure speedy disposal of cases pending in ATCs. The reference was held in memory of schoolchildren killed at the Peshawar Army Public School. The chief justices and monitoring judges of ATCs from all high courts have been asked to attend the meeting at the Supreme Court building here.

The ATCs have been asked to submit details of pending cases to Supreme Court Registrar Tahir Shahbaz by Dec 23.

The meeting will consider proposals for expeditious disposal of cases under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.

“This is a good move as it will help improve coordination among anti-terrorism courts, prosecutors and defence counsel representing the accused,” Ahmer Bilal Soofi, an expert in international and terrorism laws, said while talking to Dawn.

According to him, with at least 2,025 cases pending in over 55 ATCs in various cities and over 2,000 people detained in internment centres, Pakistan has the highest number of cases of terrorism and this had become the most ambitious prosecution exercise demanding a lot of management improvements to effectively handle such cases.

Therefore, the meeting of the chief justices, without compromising on procedural issues, might come up with broad judicial guidelines on how to dispose of the cases within the stipulated period of seven working days by brining uniformity in trial procedures and also considering innovative ideas like holding trials through video links or other means, he said.

But Karachi-based senior counsel Faisal Siddiqui, who is aware of issues relating to missing persons, is of the view that the chief justice must have called the meeting because of a narrative developing in the country that the major failure in the fight against terrorism was due to reluctance of courts to hand down convictions. This may be true in view of the fact that sometimes presiding judges avoid sentencing because of threats they receive from associates of the accused.

But a high conviction rate would not ensure that crimes or terrorism would be drastically reduced, the counsel said. Advocate Siddiqui cited the example of the United States where violent crimes took place in large numbers despite the country having the highest number of prisons in the world with 2.2 million inmates.

“There is a dire need of ending the extremist ideology and jihadi culture from the society, otherwise things will remain the same,” he said. Motivated terrorists were usually first timers and speedy convictions would never deter them from carrying out a heinous crime, he said.

Retired Justice Tariq Mehmood, a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said one of the reasons for slow pace of convictions in the ATCs was filing of wrong cases either by complainants or prosecutors by implicating the accused under terrorism charges due to enmity only to get long-term sentences since those punished could not avail themselves of the facility of annual remissions usually available to other criminals.

Published in Dawn December 20th , 2014