ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a directive for the Senate Secretariat to take a decision on a complaint against Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Waqar Ahmed Seth, one of the members of the special court that convicted former president Pervez Musharraf in the high treason case and awarded him death sentence.

The petitioner, advocate Mohammad Siddique Mirza, told the court that he had on Dec 23 filed a complaint with the Parliamentary Committee on Judges Appointment against Justice Seth since he authored a paragraph in the judgement of the treason case in which he ordered dragging the corpse of Mr Musharraf to D-Chowk (in front of parliament) if found dead and leaving it there hanging for three days.

However, it was a minority view as the two judges in the special court had expressed their disagreement over the paragraph and one of them had written a dissenting note.

Advocate Mirza informed the court that he had filed a complaint with the parliamentary committee constituted under Article 175-A of the Constitution and sought a review of the conduct of members of the special court seized with the high treason trial against Mr Musharraf.

He adopted in the petition that he requested the Senate secretary to arrange his meeting with the members of the parliamentary committee, but to no avail.

Subsequently, he requested for a directive to the Senate secretary “to arrange a meeting of the petitioner with the members of the parliamentary committee for preliminary hearing and disposal of complaint”.

Justice Minallah, however, observed that “despite his able assistance, he [the petitioner] could not show that the relief sought in the instant petition can be granted or the parliamentary committee constituted under Article 175-A of the Constitution is vested with jurisdiction to review the conduct of judicial officers”.

“Moreover, a right of appeal is provided before the august Supreme Court against the judgement rendered by the learned special court,” the court noted.

“For the above reasons, this petition is without merit and is, therefore, accordingly dismissed,” the court declared.

In December last year, the special court awarded death penalty to Mr Musharraf for imposing emergency in the country on Nov 3, 2007 and forcibly confining over 60 judges to their residences.

A Lahore High Court bench comprising Justice Syed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti and Justice Chaudhry Masood Jahangir, however, set aside the conviction of Mr Musharraf.

The LHC bench also ruled that the amended Article 6 of the Constitution, under which Mr Musharraf had been found guilty, could not be applied in the case ‘ex post facto’ (retrospectively).

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2020