- Reference not supported by judicial precedent: order.
- Comments deleted during trial but wrongly included in trial: judge.
- The observation mentioned four countries designated as “terrorist states.”
An Islamabad court ordered removing a controversial paragraph mentioning “terrorist states” from the verdict that convicted lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband Hadi Ali Chattha in a controversial tweets case last week.
In an order, Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Afzal Majoka said the controversial paragraph was added “due to an administrative error which is not supported by any statutory provision, judicial precedent, executive notification, international instrument or authoritative reference and therefore the same may be deleted as this sentence is vague and ambiguous.”
The judgment further noted that the stenographer in his written response mentioned that this sentence, along with other sentences, were deleted during the correction of the judgment, but at the time of final printing, it was incorrectly included and “that this error on his part is in good faith.”
The now-deleted paragraph, which appeared as paragraph 36 on page 18, mentioned that the four countries are currently designated as terrorist states.
During a weekly press briefing the day before, Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi said Pakistan “does not subscribe” to the judge’s opinion.
“We have seen the judgment. These are opinions of a learned judge. Pakistan, of course, does not subscribe to this opinion. This type of designation of terrorist states does not exist either in the language of the UN or in international law,” he added.
