ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will commence hearing 10 appeals instituted against military court convictions of militants from Wednesday.

The appeals will be taken up by a five-judge larger bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Anwar Zaheer Jamali. At the last hearing, on Feb 24, the chief justice had ordered that all the challenges against military court decisions be clubbed, with the directive that execution of the convicts would remain suspended until the pending petitions were decided.

Two of the convicts were awarded death sentence by the military courts for their alleged involvement in the Dec 16, 2014, carnage at the Army Public School in Peshawar, which claimed the lives of 141 people, most of them schoolchildren.

Of the 10 cases, Alaf Khan is one appellant who was awarded seven years rigorous imprisonment and had challenged the Feb 3, 2015 rejection of his petition by the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi Bench.

Alaf Khan, who is accused of acting as a double agent, was enrolled by Pakistani intelligence agencies as a source. He was tasked with visiting India-held areas and collecting useful information. He is accused of passing some information relating to the Pakistan Army to the Indian intelligence agencies to establish his credibility. He said that the information was compromised.

He claimed that due to differences developed with certain intelligence officials, he was taken into custody under Section 2(1d) of the Pakistan Army Act 1952 and was allegedly kept in illegal custody for almost 22 months from May 28, 2012 to March 6, 2014.

Later, he was tried by the Field General Court Martial (FGCM) under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 and sentenced on April 21, 2014, without being given the benefit of the time he had served while awaiting trial.

The high court rejected his petition with the observation that proceedings before the FGCM were not open to be challenged before the superior court in view of a bar contained in Article 199 of the Constitution.

The man sought relief from the Supreme Court, asking whether he was entitled to the benefit of the period he had already spent in custody, under the spirit of a 2010 Federal Shariat Court judgment, which had held that the denial of such benefit was a ‘tyrannical’ act.

The Supreme Court also ruled in 2010 that such a period of detention could not be ignored because it was not spent in jail by way of punishment.

The larger bench will also take up the cases of Haider Ali and Qari Zahir Gul, whose execution was suspended by the court earlier.

Represented by rights activist Asma Jahangir, the petitioners have pleaded that they were denied the right to a fair trial guaranteed by Article 10A of the Constitution since they were not handed over copies of the military court judgments, nor afforded the opportunity of engaging a counsel to defend themselves.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2016