Oct 11, 2007

Take Action: Killing in Karachi and Threat to the Sindh Chief Justice

May 2005 Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed was appointed as Chief Justice of Sindh High Court Karachi. Born in 1949, honourable chief justice was founder of Human Right Commision of Pakistan (HRCP) and served as its vice-president from 1987-90.

ANAA is gravely concerned about the smear compaign against chief justice. We have learned from an action alert from Asian Human Right Commission (AHRC), Singapore based Human Right group, that one ruling party of the Sindh Province, the Mutehda Qoumi Movement (MQM) has threatened Mr. Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed, on taking cases of members and office bearers of various Bar Associations.

ANAA learned that Justice SabihUddin Ahmed has granted bail to the four arrested lawyers, including Mr.Salah Uddin Gandapur, executive member of the Sindh Bar Council, who had held the protest meeting and rally on September 29. This was held in support of injured lawyers and journalists who were severely beaten by police in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, on the occasion of the filing of papers of President General Musharraf on September 27, 2007.

This legal action of the Chief Justice infuriated the ruling party, the MQM.He was then threatened on the telephone.

When asked by the journalists on the smear campaign against the Chief Justice, the Chief Minister of the province, said whilst supporting the campaign that "this is the voice of the people and he has to face it". On these remarks registrar Sindh High Court issued a contempt of court notice to the Chief Minister and formed a five-member bench to hear the contempt of court proceedings.

The lawyers are alleging that judges of the highest court of the province have been threatened by reminders of the cold-blooded murders of two prominent lawyers, Mr. Raja Riaz and Mr. Atique Qadri. Mr. Raja Riaz was murdered when the workers of the MQM attacked Sindh High Court building on September 10, 2007 and Mr. Atique Qadri was murdered on September 16 when he addressed and participated in a protest meeting on the murder of Raja Riaz.

The chief justice of the Sindh High Court was also threatened on May 12,2007, when the Chief Justice of Pakistan was stopped by the Sindh provincial government and the MQM party leadership from entering the city.
Chief Justice of Sindh High Court, Mr. Justice Sabih uddin Ahmed, then constituted a large bench of High Court judges to probe the incidents of theMay 12 killings.

On September 10, 2007 some 2000 workers of the MQM attacked the Sindh High Court building and stopped the proceedings of the large bench, which was hearing the evidences of the May 12 killings.
Please take action and support action alert by AHRC by signing the appeal.

Click here for appeal.

1 comment:

MisterDoc said...

Fuck MQM from their cord to colon. let nawaz shariff enter and let us citizens of Karachi not be deprieved us of our automobiles and cell phones.