Lawyers Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha were convicted on Saturday in a case pertaining to controversial social media posts, with a district and sessions court in Islamabad sentencing them to 17 years’ imprisonment.
In his order, Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Afzal Majoka declared the “prosecution has been able to prove its case against both the accused” under sections 9 (glorification of an offense), 10 (cyberterrorism), 26-A (false and fake information) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA).
Under Section 9, the couple has been sentenced to rigorous imprisonment of five years each as well as a fine of Rs. 5 million each, failure to pay which would increase their sentence by a year. Under Section 10, both were sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs. 30 million each, failure to pay which would increase the jail term by two years each. The final sentence, under Section 26-A, is of two years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 1 million each, failure to pay which would increase their jail terms by six months each.
The sentences will run concurrently, effectively granting them each 10 years in prison each.
Earlier, the couple was produced before the court through a video link, with Mazari alleging mistreatment of both her and her husband in custody. Subsequently, they both staged a boycott of proceedings and refused to be present for the sentencing or conclusion of arguments.
The written order states the accused couple’s social media posts had sought to depict Pakistan as a terrorist state; declared detention under Section 11-EEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act illegal; and “praised proscribed organizations and individual and claimed the judiciary as biased.” In doing so, stated the order, the two had sought to erode “public confidence in core state institutions, including the judiciary, the armed forces, the legislature, and law-enforcement agencies.”
The order stated particular weight was accorded to “whether such expression incites violence, promotes secession, encourages terrorism, or creates a real, proximate, and tangible threat” to public order and national security. “While robust criticism of the state and its functionaries is an essential feature of a democratic society and falls within the ambit of freedom of expression, an anti-state narrative is judicially understood as speech or conduct that crosses the permissible boundary of dissent and enters the domain of subversion, destabilization, or incitement against the state itself,” it added.
The judge further said the accused had been acquitted of charges under Section 11 of PECA, as none of the witnesses claimed they had tried to advance interfaith, sectarian or racial hatred through hate speech.
Both Mazari and Chattha were arrested a day earlier en route to the district courts. An Anti-Terrorism Court subsequently sent them on a 14-day judicial remand.
Reacting to the sentencing, Mazari’s mother, former minister Shireen Mazari, said: “They got their pound of flesh thru an order passed illegally but the emasculated men don’t give a damn. It was always about ‘off with their heads’.”