LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday quashed the verdict given by the special court in the Musharraf high treason case and declared the formation of the bench as “unconstitutional”.
It also ruled that the amended Article 6 of the Constitution, under which Musharraf had been found guilty, could not be applied in the case ‘ex post facto’ (retrospectively).
Article 6 of the Constitution was modified through the 18th Amendment in 2010, while the case against Musharraf concerned events that happened before that.
Musharraf had been sentenced to death by a special court on December 17, 2019, after six years of hearing the case, which was filed against him by the previous PML-N government after it assumed office in 2013.
In his petition filed in December last year, Musharraf had asked the LHC to set aside the special court’s verdict for being “illegal, without jurisdiction and unconstitutional for violating Articles 10-A, 4, 5, 10 and 10-A of the Constitution”. He also sought suspension of the verdict till a decision on his petition is made.
In an earlier hearing the bench asked the petitioner’s counsel, “The special court has already announced the verdict, tell the court how a decision of the high court will affect that judgment.”
The bench called Barrister Ali Zafar, who was present in the courtroom, to rostrum and questioned, ” if the proclamation of emergency can be called high treason?” “As per my knowledge imposition of emergency could not be termed as treason,” the jurist told the court. “If the emergency is not treason, how it all started,” the court said.
In his petitions following the damning verdict, Musharraf had asked the LHC to set aside the special court’s verdict for being illegal, without jurisdiction and unconstitutional for violating Articles 10-A, 4, 5, 10 and 10-A of the Constitution. He also sought suspension of the verdict till a decision on his petition is made.
However, the court had only admitted the petitions challenging the formation of the special court and the complaint registered against the former president. Subsequently, hearings into the case had proceeded before a three-member bench of the high court in the provincial capital.
