LAHORE, April 14: The Supreme Court on Monday questioned the legality of the state’s decision to detain Dr Ahmad Javed Khwaja and his brother for another two months on March 29 when the matter regarding their earlier detention was subjudice.
A full bench of the SC, hearing the appeal of the two Khwajas, issued notice to the Attorney General and Punjab Advocate-General to submit the state’s version on this proposition on April 23. The bench also issued show-cause notices to the provincial home secretary and Punjab IG (jails) for not turning up despite notice for Monday’s proceedings.
The detenues’ counsel Hamid Khan submitted in the court that the three-month detention of his clients imposed on the charges of having links with Al Qaeda activists lapsed on March 29, and they had already challenged such detention in the SC on March 24. The state issued orders on March 29 to detain the two brothers for another two months on espionage charges, he said, adding the fresh order was in continuation of the previous one, and the addition of the espionage charges was meant to avoid any legal complication.
The SC had ruled in its last month’s judgment that the 1973 Constitution and all the anti-terrorism laws in the country were completely silent over the issue of declaring Al Qaeda a terrorist organization. After this judgment, the state in the fresh detention orders issued against the two Khwajas substituted the previous charges with those of espionage.
How could the state issue orders for further detention when the appeal challenging the previous detention was pending for adjudication with the court, bench’s senior member Justice Javed Iqbal raised the legal proposition.
He observed that the legal assistance of both the Attorney General and the Punjab Advocate-General was necessary to address certain queries arising in the mind of the court regarding the issuance of fresh detention order.
Justice Iqbal also pointed out that the court would like to hear arguments from the state counsel as to how could the detention be extended without the production of the detenues before a review board as required by Article 10 (4) of the Constitution, and whether the detenues needed to file a fresh petition to challenge their two-month detention.
Earlier, Justice Iqbal inquired from the detenues’ counsel whether their appeal against the previous detention had become infructuous following the issuance of fresh detention orders. The counsel contended that under Article 187, the SC had the authority to issue orders in any case to meet the ends of justice. The appeal in the court was a case in which it had the authority to quash the fresh detention orders, he argued.
Mr Khan iterated that the wording of the two-month detention order clearly suggested that addition of espionage charges was merely a jugglery of words, as the state had no other ground to detain the Khwajas further. He pointed out that the anti-terrorism court, hearing a case against Khwajas on Saturday last, had refused to incorporate the allegations of links with Al Qaeda activists in its chargesheet.
The court directed him to place copy of the chargesheet on the judicial record. Justice Falaksher and Karamat Nazir Bhandari are also on the bench.