Pakistan's infamous military courts are often called 'Kangaroo Courts' by the critics all over the world as they are known to sentence people without relevent evidence in the cases that are primarily aimed at vengeance against the rivals of the military establishment.
With former Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) official Lieutenant General (retd) Amjad Shoaib admitting that Pakistan abducted Kulbhushan Jadhav from Iran, Pakistan’s claims of Jadhav being arrested on Pakistan’s soil have got punctured once again.
Now India can further use his admission to sabotage Pakistan’s bundle of lies and expose how the military courts in Pakistan are dictating terms and taking decisions on people’s lives as per their whims and fancies.
Pakistan is the only country in South Asia where military courts trial the civilians behind closed doors despite it being against the country's constitution. It’s no more a clandestine fact that military is the de facto government in Pakistan and the civilian government, judiciary and all other institutions aren’t even the rubber stamps.
Here is all you should know about military courts in Pakistan
Military courts don’t share any evidence against the accused and their four-star generals play demigods and sentence people punishment as per their fancies and Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case of no different.
?The terrorist attack on an army school in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, in which 140 people mostly school children had died paved way for the revival of military courts.
On January 6, 2015, Pakistan’s Parliament unanimously passed the 21st amendment of the Constitution which legalised special military court trials for hardcore terrorists which also included suspected civilians. The courts were revived for two years and in these two years the military courts had awarded death sentence to 161 militants and roughly 21 have been executed.
AP
In January 2017, the trial period of military courts had expired, but in March Pakistan parliament once again extended their period for two more years.
If the story published in Dawn in March is believed, there are roughly 11 military courts in Pakistan: three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, three in Punjab, two in Sindh and one in Balochistan.
AFP
According to Pakistan Army Act 1952, a military trial can be held at any place whatever, which means that it depends on Generals mood where he wants to put the accused on trial.
AFP
Under the military court system, the accused can’t hire a lawyer. The military will provide him with one counsel who will present the case of the accused before the court. Aren't they so magnanimous?
Military courts neither allow family nor the media to follow the trail it takes place in one closed room. It also doesn’t divulge the details of the trial before the verdict is pronounced.
Reuters
The guilty doesn’t have any right to appeal in civil court against the verdict of the military court. Yes, you heard it right, not even in Supreme Court of Pakistan
Reuters
General ?Zia-ul-Haq had started these military courts soon after he imposed martial law in 1979. Though he gave an argument that military courts to established to clear the old backlog, but in reality, these courts took good care of those who dared to oppose the military dictatorship of General Zia.
Pakistani journalist Abdus Sattar Ghazali, wrote in his book ‘Islamic Pakistan: Illusions & Reality’ that military courts in the General Zia’s ?period “reversed the most fundamental principle of justice – in Pakistan you were guilty until proven innocent.”