Pakistani lawyer criticizes conviction of Imaan Mazari and Hadi Chattha in Dawn column
In Pakistan, lawyer and member of the Pakistan Bar Council Salahuddin Ahmed, in a column for Dawn, criticized the conviction of lawyers Imaan Mazari and Hadi Chattha. The author described their trial as a violation of due process principles and criticized representatives of the country’s judiciary and legal community.
Conviction over posts
According to Ahmed, in January Judge Afzal Manjoka sentenced the couple to 17 years in prison. The columnist writes that the verdict against Mazari was based on six of her posts on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.
In several of these posts, Mazari called for speaking about alleged fake encounters, enforced disappearances and killings in Balochistan. She also wrote about people who, she said, were unlawfully detained and tortured, and stated that state repression in the region was strengthening the armed movement. In another post, she claimed that security forces’ reports on counterterrorism operations in Balochistan had lost credibility.
Two more posts concerned the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In one of them, Mazari criticized the policy of dividing the Taliban into “good” and “bad” and wrote that the state had released a militant responsible for the deaths of children. Another post condemned the enforced disappearance of Ghazi Amanullah, the brother of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement leader Manzoor Pashteen.
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The columnist’s assessment of the case
Ahmed noted that Chattha himself did not publish any of Mazari’s posts mentioned in the verdict. According to his description of the court ruling, Chattha was accused of reposting four of his wife’s posts.
The author also mentioned a January 6 press conference by a representative of the security forces, at which Mazari was called a “terrorists’ lawyer” and a “foreign agent.” Ahmed questioned the grounds for these assessments and the verdict, and also criticized the presidents of the bar associations at the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court for defending the convictions.
In Ahmed’s view, representatives of the judiciary and legal professions should respond to cases that, in his conviction, contradict the principles of the rule of law.
