By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has sentenced the human rights lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, to 10 years in prison each after finding that they assaulted police and disrupted security arrangements for a visiting cricket team in Islamabad in 2024.
Judge Tahir Abbas Sipra announced the verdict on Thursday at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, where the couple had been tried. They are expected to challenge the ruling.
The sentences come six weeks after the Supreme Court suspended separate 17-year terms imposed on the pair over social media posts. That reprieve lasted only hours before police rearrested them in the security breach case.
The case dates to October 25, 2024, when barriers were removed at Islamabad’s Zero Point during a Test match between England and Pakistan in Rawalpindi. Prosecutors accused the couple of removing barriers from the route set aside for the visiting team and obstructing and assaulting officers deployed there. The case was registered at Kohsar police station on the complaint of City Magistrate Ghulam Murtaza Chandio.
The couple were convicted under Section 7(h) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, which covers serious coercion or intimidation of a public servant to force him to discharge or refrain from discharging his lawful duties. For that offence each received 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs100,000.
They were also given one year under Section 186 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for obstructing a public servant, and two years under Section 353 for assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from his duty. Each of those carried a fine of Rs50,000.
The judgment said all the sentences would run concurrently, so the effective term is 10 years. The court also granted credit for time already spent in detention in the case.
Mazari-Hazir and Chattha were acquitted on four other charges: criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy, armed rioting and being members of an unlawful assembly. The judge said no evidence of conspiracy had been produced and that the footage did not show the couple acting with enough other people to constitute an unlawful assembly.
In the 22-page judgment, the court relied on police testimony and video of the confrontation. It said a forensic examination found no sign the recording had been edited or tampered with. The footage, it said, showed the couple trying to remove barriers, letting some motorcyclists through, and obstructing and assaulting officers.
Judge Sipra held that the two were “jointly responsible for the offence committed under joint object and common intention”, and that their aim was to compromise security arrangements by pressuring officials. The court accepted that freedom of movement was a constitutional right but said it was subject to the law and did not permit anyone to assault law enforcement agencies.
The judgment cited the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, saying that putting the security of a visiting international side at risk showed an intention to create “a sense of terror”. It described the couple as well-educated people who understood the sensitivity of the matter.
The defence rejected the terrorism label. In statements recorded on October 27, Mazari-Hazir and Chattha denied the charges and said police witnesses had falsely implicated them because of their pro bono work for street vendors, people facing false blasphemy allegations and families of victims of enforced disappearances.
“I am a prisoner of conscience who has been at the receiving end of state persecution,” the statements read.
The couple said they had been presented in a cage during the trial, which prevented effective communication with their lawyers and the court. Their counsel argued that the evidence was contradictory and that Mazari-Hazir had herself been injured by police. The prosecution called seven witnesses. The court appointed a state counsel to defend the couple after disputes over their production in court and their lawyers’ access to them.
Before the verdict, defence counsel Aimal Khan Mandokhail asked the court to hold off until petitions pending before the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had been decided. He said the court could not legally announce a verdict until then, and that a request to transfer the case was also pending before the IHC. The court adjourned until 1pm and then delivered its judgment.
Zainab Janjua, who represents the couple, said: “We will challenge the decision.”
Mazari-Hazir’s mother, Shireen Mazari, who was human rights minister in the cabinet of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, told Reuters the couple had not been allowed to defend themselves through their own lawyer and had not been given key legal documents.
On Monday the couple asked the Supreme Court to overturn an October 19 IHC order refusing to halt the trial. They had been indicted on October 7 and pleaded not guilty.
The couple have been in custody since January 23, when they were arrested over a protest outside the IHC and the alleged manhandling of the IHC Bar Association president. The next day a sessions court sentenced them to 17 years under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act over social media posts that authorities said were hostile to the state and its security institutions.
Lawyers and UN experts condemned those convictions. Amnesty International called the charges politically motivated and criticised the fairness of the proceedings. The Supreme Court suspended the sentences and granted bail on September 17.
In her statement, Mazari-Hazir said the couple had spent the third year of their marriage in jail. “We are being made an example to further cement the chilling effect against those who stand (or want to stand) against tyranny, oppression and injustice,” she said.
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