Sindh High Court summons Attorney General in Omer Shaikh case
KARACHI: Refusing to excuse the absence of the Attorney General of Pakistan to explain the legality involved in shifting of Omer Shaikh, who is condemned to death for planning kidnap-murder of Wall Street Journal’s journalist Daniel Pearl, a Sindh High Court bench asked, on March 18, the AG to appear in the court on April 6.
The bench, comprising Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Justice Mohammad Mujeebullah Siddiqui, was hearing an application challenging the shifting of Omer Shaikh from Hyderabad Prison to Adyala Prison, Rawalpindi.
“You say the prisoner has been removed from the jurisdiction of this court for the sake of his own security. If a prisoner is not safe in one prison, how can you claim he is safe in another,” observed Justice Siddiqui when deputy attorney-general Kursheed Hashmi submitted that Omer Shaikh had been shifted for his own security.
When the application was taken up for hearing before the tea break, the deputy attorney-general (DAG) submitted that as per a statement he received from the ministry of interior, Omer Shaikh had been sifted to Rawalpindi as the government feared for his security in Hyderabad Prison.
The bench asked the DAG to check whether he had been brought back as, some media reports suggested.
After the tea break both Abdul Waheed Katpur, counsel for the applicant, and the DAG informed the bench that Omer Shaikh had not been brought back.
The bench observed that finding itself not fully satisfied with the assertions of the DAG it would like to hear from the AG to know what laws warranted the removal of the prisoner from the jurisdiction of the court before which his appeal against the trial court verdict was pending adjudication.
The bench ordered to repeat the notice to the AG for personal appearance on April 6 in hearing of the application, and adjourned the hearing of the application as well as appeals of convicts Omer Shaikh, Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Shaikh Adil for the same date.
Appeal of Omer Shaikh against his death sentence by an anti-terrorism court Hyderabad, appeals of Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Shaikh Adil against their life imprisonment and state appeal for enhancing life imprisonment of three convicts to death have been pending before an anti- terrorism appellate bench of the SHC for more than one year.
Source: Daily Times
Date:3/19/2004
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