Amraiz Khan
Lahore
Legal expert Ali Zafar has told the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday that the con-stitution of a special court to try former president Musharraf was not in line with the law. On December 17, the same court had convicted Musharraf for high treason and handed him the death penalty on five counts in a 2-1 majority verdict.
A couple of days back LHC had summoned senior lawyer Ali Zafar on Friday to testify before the bench as a legal expert. In his remarks, Zafar appeared to largely back the statements made by AAG Ishtiaq.
“The complaint filed against the former president was not submitted through the right authority, the formation of a special court to hear the case was also unlawful, and even the case that was made against the former ruler was not according to the law,” Zafar told the court. “The attorney general forwarded a summary to the PM Office dated June 2013 in which reference was made to the Musharraf case. However, it was on December 29, 2013, that the interior ministry was accorded the authority to file a complaint against the former president,” he noted.
Zafar also maintained that whenever a law mandated that a case be filed in these matters, the federal cabinet was endowed with the authority to have the final say on the issue. “Who will give permission to the authorities to file such a complaint?” Zafar questioned. In response to the query, Justice Naqvi remarked that the name of the president should have been on the complaint, and in this particular instance, the prime minister had given the permission to file the complaint against the former president.
The former president had challenged not only the conviction, but also the formation of the special court that handed him the death penalty for high treason, as well as the complaint filed against him by the government of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif that resulted in the trial.
A day earlier, a three-member bench of the high court had observed it could not hear the appeal against the death sentence handed out to the former president, but agreed to admit the petition against the formation of the special court in the high trea-son case.The bench, comprising Justice Syed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti and Justice Chaudhry Masood Jahangir, held another hearing into the case on Friday. Additional Attorney-General (AAG) Ishtiaq Khan and the counsels for the petitioner appeared in court on Friday.
