KARACHI: An antiterrorism court dismissed on Saturday an application moved by four suspects pleading to halt the trial in four identical cases pertaining to May 12 incidents due to their lack of confidence in the judge.

Mayor of Karachi Wasim Akhtar and around 19 other activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement have been booked in four cases registered against them under Sections 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 324 (attempt to murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with the Section 7 (punishment for acts of terrorism) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 registered at the airport police station in 2007.

On Saturday, the matter was fixed before the ATC-II judge for indictment of the suspects in one of the four identical cases.

Mayor Akhtar and other suspects, except Zulfiqar, were present.

His defence counsel submitted that Zulfiqar was admitted to a hospital due to heart ailment and pleaded to exempt him from personal appearance for one day.

Therefore, the judge deferred indictment of the suspects till Dec 8 and directed all of them to appear on the next date.

The judge also dismissed an application moved by four of the suspects — Zafar, Zakir, Farhat and Abbas — pleading to halt the proceedings in the present case and three other identical ones against them.

In the application, the defence counsel submitted that the applicants had filed an application before the administrative judge of the antiterrorism courts for transfer of the proceedings in all the four identical cases pertaining to May 12 incidents against them to any other court since they had lost confidence in the ATC-II judge.

Therefore, in the application the counsel had requested the judge to stall the proceedings in all the cases against the applicants till any order was passed by the administrative judge on their plea.

Almost two years after his arrest in seven cases pertaining to the May 12 mayhem, the same court had formally indicted Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar and others in one of the seven pending cases of rioting and arson. The charge was framed against them on May 16.

The Karachi mayor, Umair Siddiqui, Muhammad Nasir and Nasir Zia were among 20 accused charged with rioting, attempted murder and terrorism in four cases lodged at the airport police station during the May 12, 2007 chaos.

Later, in October, the court had indicted the same set of accused in a second identical case.

Around 50 people were killed and over 100 wounded in attacks on rallies organised by members of political parties and legal fraternity who had tried to receive the then deposed chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, at the Karachi airport ahead of a lawyers’ gathering.

Justice Chaudhry was forced to fly back to Islamabad after having been restricted to the airport for nine hours. Wasim Akhtar was home adviser to the Sindh chief minister at the time.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2018