The Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday reserved its verdict on the intra-court appeal challenging the verdict about the trial of civilians in military courts.
The hearing on the appeal has been completed, and a short verdict is expected to be announced within this week. Justice Aminuddin Khan, who is heading the seven-member bench hearing the case, said after reserving the verdict.
The seven-judge bench had taken up a set of 38 intra-court appeals (ICAs) moved by the federal and provincial governments, as well as the Shuhada Forum Balochistan, etc, against the SC’s Oct 23, 2023, verdict.
During the proceedings, Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan revealed that the Corps Commander Lahore was among the high-ranking officers forcibly retired without pension for negligence during the Jinnah House attack. When Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan inquired whether the retired Corps Commander had appeared as a witness in the trial court, the Attorney General said that information would be available when appeals from the trial court are filed.
Last year, the apex court’s constitutional bench granted conditional permission to military courts to announce verdicts in cases involving 85 suspects allegedly involved in the May 9, 2023, riots.
In its order, the constitutional bench had said judgments of military courts would be conditional to the top court’s verdict on the cases pending before it.
Subsequently, the military courts sentenced 85 PTI activists to two to 10 years of “rigorous imprisonment” for their involvement in the May 9, 2023, protests, marking the conclusion of trials for those held in military custody over the attacks on army installations and monuments.
Later in January, the military accepted mercy pleas of 19 out of the 67 convicts sentenced in the May 9 riots case on “humanitarian grounds”, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said.
