A Pakistani court on Saturday jailed a prominent rights activist and her husband for 10 years over “anti-state” social media posts, just one day after their arrest.<\/p>\n
Imaan Mazari, a 32-year-old lawyer and vocal critic of Pakistan’s military, “disseminated highly offensive” content on her X account, according to an Islamabad court. <\/p>\n
A written court statement said Mazari and her husband, fellow lawyer Hadi Ali Chattha, “will have to remain in jail for 10 years”.<\/p>\n
They were handed prison terms on three charges — including “cyber terrorism” and “intentional dissemination of false and fake information” — to run concurrently, the document said. <\/p>\n
Their sentencing came a day after Pakistani police arrested the couple as they headed to a court hearing in the capital. <\/p>\n
Videos circulating on social media showed police vans escorting a bar association vehicle carrying Mazari to court before it was stopped at an underpass, where masked security officials prevented journalists from filming the arrest.<\/p>\n
– ‘Severe repression’ –<\/p>\n
Mazari is the daughter of Pakistan’s former minister for human rights, Shireen Mazari, while her late father was the South Asian country’s top paediatrician. <\/p>\n
She is a pro bono lawyer on some of the most sensitive cases, including the enforced disappearances of ethnic Balochs, as well as defending the community’s top activist, Mahrang Baloch. <\/p>\n
She also represented those accused of blasphemy — an incendiary charge in Pakistan — as well as Afghans who face crackdowns by the authorities. <\/p>\n
Senate opposition leader Allama Raja Nasir Abbas said the two lawyers were convicted “solely for social media posts criticizing what they saw as state abuses and advocating for marginalized communities”. <\/p>\n
“This ruling sends a chilling message that peaceful advocacy and criticism of power will be met with severe repression,” he wrote in a post on X. <\/p>\n
On Friday, Syed Wajid Ali Shah Gillani, president of the Islamabad High Court Bar Association, alleged in a video statement that police manhandled the couple before arresting them.<\/p>\n
Imaan Mazari told AFP on Tuesday that she and her husband feared arrest over undisclosed police cases, a move she said would be a “grave injustice”.<\/p>\n
The couple had been confined to the Islamabad High Court’s premises since Tuesday, spending nights at a lawyers’ association building, after being granted bail in a cybercrime case.<\/p>\n
Changes to the constitution and hasty legislation passed by parliament have pushed Pakistan towards tighter state control, with diminishing political and civil rights. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pakistani court on Saturday jailed a prominent rights activist and her husband for 10 years over “anti-state”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-435420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}