LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday stayed execution of a man convicted by a military court on charges of abetting an attack on the office of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Multan.

A division bench headed by Justice Muhammad Tariq Abbasi passed the order on a petition moved by Abdul Qayyum of Faisalabad sentenced to death by a Lahore military court under Pakistan Army (Amendment) Act 2015 on Jan 4 last year.

Representing the petitioner, Advocate Anas Ghazi argued that requisites of justice were not met by the military court convicting his client. He said the petitioner was not given opportunity of a fair trial and was condemned unheard.

The lawyer pointed out that an anti-terrorism court of Multan had already tried and convicted culprits of the 2009 attack on the ISI office and the petitioner was not among them. He asked the bench to stay the execution of the petitioner till a final decision of the petition since his mercy petition had been rejected by the army chief.

Through a written reply filed before the bench, Punjab home department stated that a jail appeal of Abdul Qayyum had been dismissed by Judge Advocate General’s Department on March 22, 2016. It said the provisions of Army Act were the law made by parliament and that if any such provision tends to affect fundamental rights that provision did not become void as newly added proviso to Article 175 of the Constitution had already been declared being not ultra vires by the Supreme Court.

The home department stated that a division bench of the LHC (Bahawalpur seat) had dismissed an identical petition on the same matter. Therefore, it said, the instant petition should be dismissed.

After hearing the arguments, the bench suspended operation of the death penalty and stayed Qayyum’s execution till next hearing on Jan 25. The bench also sought a reply from the attorney general on the matter. Qayyum is detained at a high security jail in Sahiwal.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2017