PESHAWAR: The government is introducing major changes to the anti-terrorism law to give sweeping powers to law-enforcement agencies and courts to effectively deal with militancy and terrorism, sources told Dawn.
‘We are living in a changed environment. The new environment has thrown some new challenges and it has emerged that the existing anti-terror law is inadequate and too weak to deal with the new challenges,’ a senior official said.
In early May, shortly before the military launched operation Rah-i-Rast, army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and suggested major amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997. ‘The ball has been rolling since then,’ a military officer said. ‘We need laws to deal with the scourge.’
Some government officials complained that deliberations on the issue had taken too long, while law-enforcement and intelligence agencies continued to round up militants, not only from Swat and Malakand but also other parts of the region.
‘They are being bailed out quicker than babies’ diapers are changed,’ an official remarked.
According to another official, the bill containing the proposed amendments should have been at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat by Sept 3. Over 600 detained militants were awaiting trial, the sources said.
The Minister of State for Law, Mr Afzal Sandhu, acknowledged that the amendments were being finalised and expressed the hope that these would be ready a week after the Eid. ‘We are holding discussion with all stakeholders, including the army,’ the minister told Dawn.
‘A bill containing the amendments will be tabled in parliament if it is in session or promulgated as an ordinance,’ he said.
An official said the military’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) branch headed by the adjutant general who reports to Gen Kayani was interacting with the federal law division to deliberate on and push through the amendments.
The amendments include doing away with the discretionary powers of anti-terrorism courts to grant bail and remand of the accused.
They provide for procuring and recording evidence through modern communication systems, including video-conferencing, to protect potential witnesses and also to hold trials in prisons for security reasons.
One of the amendments proposes to grant powers to the government instead of the superintendents of police to hold a suspect under preventive detention and increase the remand period to 60 days from 30 days, after informing the ATC of the suspect’s identity and place of detention.
The remand period should not be less than 10 days in any case. It has been proposed that magistrates in Malakand appointed under the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation of 2009 be given special powers to grant remands of terrorism suspects.
‘We have seen that when a court bails out a terrorist or a hardened criminal, witnesses are usually scared of deposing against him which affects the trial. The NAB Ordinance of 1999 and Control of Narcotics Substance Act (CNSA) of 1997 placed similar restrictions on courts,’ an official explained.
Acknowledging that public witnesses are usually reluctant to appear before courts to give evidence against suspects for fear of retribution, it has been proposed that a suspect’s confession before an SP or a senior military officer should be considered valid and given due weightage.
Another proposed amendment seeks forfeiture of the property of offenders involved in terrorism.
Currently, the penalty of forfeiture of property was available only in cases related to hijacking and kidnapping for ransom, the official said. ‘We want the law to be more stringent and tough,’ he said.
It has been proposed that the period for completion of investigation should be extended from seven days to 90 days to allow investigators to gather evidence in what have become more sophisticated and organised terrorism incidents.
It has been proposed that sections relating to publication of proclamation of offenders in national dailies and appointment of advocates for absconding accused in terrorism cases may be deleted from the statute book.
In the existing ATA, a convict has been granted a period of 30 days to appeal against conviction, while the state has been given only 15 days to appeal against acquittal.
A proposed amendment seeks to increase the period of appeal for the state to 30 days to help consolidate and substantiate its case.
More significantly, it has been proposed that the onus to prove innocence should be on the accused.
‘Ordinarily, a suspect is innocent unless proven guilty, while what we are proposing to do is to shift the burden of proving innocence on the suspects who would be considered guilty unless proven innocent,’ the official said.
It has also been proposed to do away with Section 103 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) that provides for search in the presence of ‘two or more respectable inhabitants of a locality’.
The official said the amendments, if approved, would help the government prosecute terrorists and make them pay for their deeds that caused massive losses of life and property.
‘The public wants all terror leaders to be caught and executed publicly. At the very least what we can do is to ensure that the terrorists don’t get away by finding loopholes in our legal system,’ he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment