Pakistan Court for PM’s Office

Laura:

A top Pakistani court on Saturday directed the Prime Minister’s Office to issue directives to the country’s powerful intelligence agencies, including the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and ask them not to approach any judge or member of their staff to obtain favorable verdicts.

The intelligence agencies, especially the ISI, the Military Intelligence (MI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) have been accused by several judges of pressuring them through different means to obtain the desired verdicts, especially in the cases of the former prime minister. minister and founder of Pakistan Tehreek- e-Insaf Imran Khan, his party leaders and supporters.

Almost all – six of the eight judges of the Islamabad High Court – and some judges of the anti-terrorism courts in the Punjab have written to the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court (LHC), respectively, drawing their attention to the open interference by intelligence agencies in judicial matters.

Some of them complained that their family members were detained by intelligence agencies to put pressure on them (judges).

Lahore High Court judge Shahid Karim on Saturday issued written instructions to the Prime Minister’s Office on the complaint of an ATC judge in Punjab’s Sargodha district against harassment by ISI personnel.

“The Prime Minister is responsible for the actions of the intelligence agencies as they come under his command. Instructions will be issued by the Prime Minister’s Office to all civil or military agencies, including the ISI and the IB, on strict instructions not to approach or contact any judge, whether of higher or subordinate judiciary, or any member of his staff for any purpose in future,” the judge said in his written order. Similar instructions were also issued to the Punjab police.

The court said the inspector general and the police chief would be held personally responsible and contempt proceedings would be initiated in case of non-implementation of its order.

The LHC also directed ATC judges in Punjab to “download call recording apps on their mobile phones to have record of all such calls (from intelligence agencies) made to influence judicial proceedings”. The Sargodha ATC judge was scheduled to hear the cases of some PTI leaders, including the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, Omar Ayub, when he was informed that a senior ISI officer wanted to meet him in his chamber. When the judge refused, several incidents of harassment directed at his family occurred in the following days.

PTI spokesperson Raoof Hasan said that as part of a well-thought-out and malicious conspiracy, the mandate-stealing government and its handlers are coercing the judiciary into taking decisions of their choosing.

“The trend of holding judges and their families hostage and occupying the courts is being used as a new tactic to prevent the courts from delivering justice, as such blatant interference in judicial matters has already been described by six judges of the Islamabad High Court in its report,” he said.

(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)