PAKISTANI COURT SENTENCES TWO LAWYERS TO 10 YEARS IN PRISON

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court sentenced human rights lawyers Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha to 10 years in prison on Thursday over security arrangements for England’s 2024 cricket tour. Judge Tahir Abbas Sipra delivered the verdict during a trial inside Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. The court found that the couple removed road barriers from a route designated for the team’s convoy in Islamabad and obstructed police officers. Mazari and Chattha denied the charges and called themselves “prisoners of conscience”. The court also imposed one-year and two-year terms for offences involving public servants, with all sentences to run concurrently.

The case concerned an incident on 25 October 2024 at Zero Point, a road junction in Islamabad. Prosecutors said the couple’s actions put the cricket team’s security at risk. In his judgement, Sipra described the removal of a barrier as “a very common nature ordinary type of incident apparently”, while finding that the couple intended to “create a sense of terror”. The court fined each of them 200,000 Pakistani rupees (£541). The couple had previously received sentences of up to 17 years for social media posts criticising the military; Pakistan’s Supreme Court suspended those sentences in August, but police re-arrested them before their release.

Amnesty International said the proceedings denied Mazari and Chattha an open and fair trial. The organisation said the couple sat behind a cage-like structure during hearings. Shireen Mazari, Imaan Mazari’s mother and a former Pakistani human rights minister, called the proceedings a “sham trial without any due process”. In their defence document, the couple said the authorities were making an example of them to discourage opposition to injustice.