Imaan, Hadi move SC against IHC order refusing to stay trial in security breach case

Dawn · 26/10/2026، 12:56:40 PM

ISLAMABAD: Incarcerated human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, on Monday approached the Supreme Court to challenge the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) Oct 19 order refusing to stay the trial before an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in the security breach case. The case pertains to the alleged disruption of the security route of an international cricket team and incitement to public unrest. The couple, accused of removing barriers from the route, was indicted on October 7. On Oct 19, the IHC took up appeals filed by Imaan and Hadi against the Oct 10 ATC order that rejected their petitions challenging the framing of charges and the inclusion of terrorism-related provisions. While issuing notices, the IHC had said it would decide how to proceed once the parties’ responses were received. Subsequently, the couple, through senior counsel Faisal Siddiqui, filed separate near-identical petitions before the SC on Monday, challenging the IHC’s Oct 19 order. The plea argued that the trial court proceeded with unprecedented haste by recording the examination-in-chief of six prosecution witnesses on Oct 10 and 14, and accepting the prosecution’s request to shift the trial to jail. The decision to conduct the trial in jail had also been challenged before the IHC, with the petition pointing out that the trial court had appointed state counsel . The petitions alleged that the ongoing trial was nothing but persecution aimed at subverting the SC’s order suspending the petitioners’ 17-year sentences in the controversial social media post case and at preventing their eventual release through an allegedly frivolous and mala fide case that had mysteriously resurfaced. Imaan’s petition argued that the IHC had “erroneously refused to exercise its discretion to grant ad interim relief to stay the criminal trial, despite multiple factual and legal reasons warranting such relief and repeated requests”. It said it was settled law that ad interim relief could not be denied