Speaking at a panel discussion alongside former human rights minister Shireen Mazari and former senator Farhatullah Babar, Minallah said freedom of expression had been central to the movement because continuous media coverage had allowed people to follow political developments and hear competing viewpoints.
“There was 24-hour live coverage, and the coverage did not stop even for a minute. Slogans were raised; slogans were also raised against those slogans, and the leaders of every political party, who themselves were in the opposition, also spoke openly. But because of this kind of freedom of expression, people came to know the reality, and some hope was created,” he said.
What followed the restoration of the judiciary, he said, amounted to a betrayal. “It was a betrayal with the people of this country who stood up for that very movement,” he said, adding that the first betrayal was that the judiciary, along with many people from the media, was among those who wanted the 18th Amendment reversed.
Minallah described the amendment as a major step for Pakistan because it had empowered the provinces. “After the 18th Amendment, a political crisis began in this country which has continued to this day, and will continue until the 18th Amendment is taken back,” he said. He declined to identify the forces he believed had an interest in its reversal.
Recalling his time at the Islamabad High Court (IHC), Minallah said the court had built considerable public trust, drawing litigants from far-flung areas, including Balochistan.
He said prisoners in Adiala Jail had sent him handwritten letters, which he converted into petitions, and that, as chief justice, he had visited the jail three times along with the other judges to meet prisoners individually.
He further said he had appointed Shireen Mazari, then a federal minister, to head a commission dealing with the issue, telling her that such matters were the responsibility of the executive rather than the courts.
Minallah also raised the state’s use of eminent domain in and around the capital, saying thousands of petitions, many of them originally filed at the Rawalpindi bench and later transferred, had been pending from poor people whose land had been taken for public purposes.
The most serious issue before the high court, he said, was enforced disappearances, adding that lawyers often did not appear in such cases out of fear and that, in most of them, Imaan Mazari had appeared.
He said he had also constituted what he called the strongest commission on Balochistan, made up of the most vocal voices in society, including the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Raza Rabbani, academics and Sardar Ataullah Mengal. “That report, to this day, has never come out,” he said, adding that he had moved to the SC before it surfaced.
Minallah said the final year and a half of his judicial career had been the most significant, and described sitting on a three-member bench that took up around 350 pending death-penalty petitions, the earliest appeals dating back to 2008, 2009 and 2010.
He said 95 per cent of those on death row had been too poor to hire a lawyer, that many had spent more than 15 years in prison, and that several had been acquitted after 25 years because there was no evidence against them.
Women made up 25 per cent of the victims in those cases, he said, all from very poor families — “someone’s sister, someone’s mother, someone’s wife” — and the offences against them had been as brutal as those in cases that attracted public attention. “Nobody was interested in these people,” he said.
Turning to the letter written by six judges of the IHC, Minallah said the SC had dealt with the matter by turning the authors into the accused. He said the episode had led to the destruction of the institution, with judges removed or transferred to Peshawar and Lahore, “only because they wrote those things which everybody in this society already knew”.
He said he had personally elevated all six, and that the opposition to their appointments — which came from every direction — was not because they were incompetent but because of their integrity. “They were feared because they were fearlessly independent and would not accept anyone’s influence,” he said.
Minallah further said that he read two news reports in the preceding days that had surprised him: one judge saying Pakistan was about to become a hub of international arbitration, and the chief justice saying at a function that if any judge of the subordinate judiciary faced outside influence or pressure, “we all stand behind them”. He contrasted this with the fate of the six judges.
On freedom of expression, Minallah said the previous government had issued a PECA ordinance months before it was removed, and that he had tried to persuade it that the matter was important.
He recalled granting a stay against the arrest of a journalist who had been targeted after reproducing material from a book about a family, following a complaint to the FIA by an elected representative, and a similar stay in a case in Lahore, after which the person was released the same day.
Without freedom of expression, he said, there would be no accountability, no way for people to learn the truth, and curricula would be distorted. Public trust, he said, was not created by speeches. “Public trust exists when people go to that court,” he said, noting that petitions on enforced disappearances were no longer being filed.
Minallah further said civil society, the media and the bar associations that had driven the lawyers’ movement did not exist in the same form today. Of the roughly 60 judges who had refused to take the oath on November 3, he said, 55 later went back and took the oath from IHC CJ Dogar, while five remained.
“If we are to have justice in this country, if we are to move forward, we have no other way except that each and every one of us plays our role, and at the very least, if we cannot do anything else, we must at least speak the truth,” he concluded.
Commenting on Imaan and Hadi's case, Farhatullah Babar said the stated reason for the case was that Imaan had tweeted something and that Chattha had retweeted it, and noted that a powerful institution had itself registered the FIR — something he said had rarely happened before.
“Imaan Mazari challenged those people and those institutions who were working against the law,” he said, adding that she had focused on missing persons and on cases involving attacks, and had stood with the families of the disappeared at a time when powerful people could not be held to account.
He recalled a Baloch protest that lasted two and a half months, and said she had volunteered to be his own defence counsel when the FIA began an inquiry against him. “I will always be grateful,” he said.
Babar set out the position of the case: roughly eight or nine months had passed with the couple in jail, and she had been sentenced to 17 years. Around May 10 or 12, he said, the SC had told the IHC to decide the suspension of her sentence within two weeks. “And from May 12 or May 10 until today, September 14,” the matter had continued to move between the high court and the SC, he said.
“Our criminal justice system is already broken, but I do not remember such an incident,” he added, describing it as an illustration of the way the judicial process in Pakistan was being used for political ends. He also noted that she had summoned the prime minister.
Babar appealed to civil society to attend the SC hearing on the 17th. “When we cannot do anything else, but on the day there is a hearing in court, as many people as possible should come to the court,” he said, acknowledging that people were often not allowed inside.
“No commotion, no raising slogans — standing waiting to get permission to enter… It is a big thing in support,” he said.
Without freedom of speech and freedom of association, he said, no other right could be secured, and both had now ended in Pakistan. “In our country there is a lot of wisdom, a lot of courage… but there is no voice. I request all of you to raise your voice,” he said
Shireen Mazari said she had been fortunate that Minallah was chief justice of the IHC when an attempt was made to take her away, as he issued a production order the same night and she was brought back. It had been reported that she was being taken towards Rahim Yar Khan (RYK), she said, but the party returned on the motorway.
“At that time I realised how such an abduction takes place,” she said, adding that the IHC of that period, which also granted relief in military court sentencing cases, “was a completely different thing”.
Recalling her daughter’s work while she was a minister, Mazari said Imaan had drafted the law on enforced disappearances and pushed it to the National Assembly, where it disappeared. “I publicly said that the bill had disappeared between the Assembly and the [Senate],” she said.
She said Imaan had also drafted the journalists’ protection law, which included the right to safeguard sources, special protection for women journalists, an obligation on media house owners to provide protection when journalists covered dangerous situations, and insurance.
She said she had heard the law had been sent for amendments, which she called unfortunate. Imaan had also worked with women’s groups on the expansion of the harassment law, she added.
On missing persons, Mazari said that when Baloch protesters sat at D-Chowk during her government’s tenure, she had gone to meet them and had arranged for a 10-member delegation to meet the prime minister.
A list was given two weeks later, she said, and while several people were recovered, several could not be. When Baloch women came again more recently, she said, nobody was willing even to talk to them.
She further said the one-man commission on enforced disappearances headed by retired chief justice Javed Iqbal had a basic flaw because the body deciding whether a case amounted to an enforced disappearance included the very people against whom the allegations were made, including intelligence agencies and civil and military officials.
A committee was formed to reform it, but the effort failed, she said, adding: “There were many shortcomings and failures in our government as well.”
She also said Chattha’s health was not good. He had rung the bell at night when his health deteriorated, she said, but the police officer on duty did not come for 40 minutes.
With one meeting a week and no telephone calls allowed, the family had no way of confirming whether he had been properly examined. Imaan had a severe infection two weeks earlier, she said, and received medical attention only after a week of public pressure and a press release. “She is okay now,” she said.
Mazari further said the trial itself had lacked due process, with final sentencing submissions not completed, defence witnesses not allowed to appear and no cross-examination.
Mazari thanked civil society, lawyers and journalists, saying their support kept the couple’s morale high. “Because the biggest danger is that, after a few months… people tend to return to their own lives,” she said. “But forgetting people who have fought for you, for human rights, would be very unfortunate,” she concluded.
The SC hearing in the case is listed for September 17, with proceedings to begin at 9am.