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Courts overwhelmed by war on terror

KARACHI: For all the breakthroughs Pakistan made against Al Qaeda and homegrown militant groups in 2004, its war on terror risks sliding into a morass due to abuse of the court appeals process by lawyers for terror convicts.

Frustrated police officers say judges and investigators are subject to intimidation from men they believed had been taken out of circulation for good, and some prisoners are even pulling the strings of terror networks from their cells.

“These dangerous terrorists are not just alive, but under the jail manual enjoy a lot of facilities including visitors,” said a senior police officer at the forefront of the crackdown on militant groups in Karachi.

“They coordinate with each other and even direct operations by exploiting the corrupt jail system.”

In December 2003, President Pervez Musharraf survived two Al Qaeda-inspired assassination attempts. Pakistan’s security forces subsequently redoubled efforts to bust terror groups thriving in its teeming cities and in its remote mountains on the border with Afghanistan.

A year later, during an official visit to Washington, London and Paris, President Musharraf was able to crow over victories against Al Qaeda following a series of high-profile arrests and a major army crackdown on Islamic militancy in tribal regions on the Afghan border.

US President George W Bush praised President Musharraf’s determination “to bring to justice not only people like Osama Bin Laden, but those who would inflict harm and pain on his own people”.

Pakistan, a close US ally in the war on terror since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, has arrested more Al Qaeda-linked suspects than any other country, with more than 600 captured in the last three years.

But the security forces’ successes are being undermined by the inability of courts to cope.

Iqbal Haider, a former law minister, said courts had more than a million cases pending.

Appalling backlog: “The infrastructure of our courts is appalling,” he said. “Our legal system is painfully slow.”

In volatile Karachi, about 200 convicted militants, including several sentenced to hang, are awaiting appeals in the Sindh High Court, officials said.

The situation is mirrored at courts across Pakistan where hundreds more appeals challenging punishments handed down by lower anti-terrorism courts have been lodged.

“This delay is extremely damaging for the war on terror,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani analyst and author of a book on Afghanistan’s Taliban.

“It shows the government doesn’t have a sufficient focus to bring these people to justice,” he said.

“The judiciary is in a mess.”

Frustration is growing among the police.

“We arrest militants and smash their cells, but getting them convicted has proved very difficult,” said a senior Karachi police official who declined to be identified.

“Even if we get them convicted in lower courts, their appeals drag on in superior courts for years,” he said.

Pakistani law gives a convict the right to appeal in the high court and Supreme Court. But no case can be heard if even one of the defence lawyers is absent.

Prominent Islamist militants, including British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, are among the convicts whose appeal is pending before the high court.

Pearl killing: Sheikh was sentenced to death in July 2002 for planning the abduction and killing of US reporter Daniel Pearl and not a single hearing of Sheikh’s case has been held since he filed his appeal on July 19, 2002.

The two-member bench of the Sindh High Court has adjourned the case without a formal hearing more than 20 times, lawyers say.

“It’s nobody’s fault. Judges are overwhelmed by work,” Sheikh’s defence lawyer, Abdul Waheed Katpar, said.

Habib Ahmed, an assistant advocate general, said more judges were needed to cope given the crime rate in a country of 150 million people. The government has introduced a bill in parliament to try to ensure that terror cases are dealt with promptly, Law Minister Mohammad Wasi Zafar said.

“The National Assembly has passed the bill. We await its approval in the Senate,” he said. “The government also plans to increase the number of judges.”

But lawyers don’t want to be judges. They would be paid less and would be more vulnerable to threats.

“Those who are fighting world powers are not afraid of judges,” a Law Ministry official said. “They openly threaten them. We have to improve security for judges even after their retirement.” reuters

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