Lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband, advocate Hadi Ali Chattha, were convicted by a district and sessions court in Islamabad in a case pertaining to controversial social media posts on Saturday and sentenced to 17-year prison terms.
The couple were produced before the court through a video link, with Mazari alleging mistreatment in custody and announcing a boycott of the proceedings.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Afzal Majoka announced the verdict. Special prosecutors Barrister Fahad and Rana Usman were present in the courtroom at the time of the verdict, while none of the lawyers representing the couple were present.
The written order said: “From perusal of the tweets, re-tweets and posts of accused persons it follows that they have stated the Pakistan as terrorist state, the detention under section 11-EEE of ATA as illegal detention and have praised proscribed organisations and individual and claimed the judiciary as biased. Ordinarily, this form of narrative employs emotive language, selective presentation of facts, historical grievances, or ideological framing with the object of eroding public confidence in core state institutions, including the judiciary, the armed forces, the legislature, and law-enforcement agencies. In certain instances, it may extend to the glorification of resistance, rebellion, or the denial of the state’s lawful authority.
“In constitutional and national security jurisprudence, courts have consistently drawn a distinction between protected democratic dissent and an anti-state narrative by examining the intent, content, context, and foreseeable impact of the expression in question. Particular weight is 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, destabilisation, or incitement against the state itself. In such circumstances, reasonable restrictions imposed by constitutional and statutory law are held to be justified. The accused persons crossed the permissible boundaries under the law by their tweets, re-tweets and posts; thus, has committed the offence under Section 9/10/26-A of Peca.”
Regarding Section 11 of Peca, the order said that none of the witnesses claimed that the accused had tried to advance interfaith, sectarian or racial hatred through hate speech, so both were acquitted of the charge.