New Delhi: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges, in a letter to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), have urged the council to convene a judicial convention to address the alleged interference of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in judicial matters, as reported by Geo News.
The letter stated that senior ISI officials had been influencing judicial proceedings and pressuring judges. It was sent to the Supreme Judicial Council and all judges of the Supreme Court with a request for guidance on the “interference” of the spy agencies in courts’ affairs. In a letter to the SJC, six judges of the IHC–Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kiyani, Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, Justice Babar Sattar, Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan, Justice Arbab Muhammad Tahir, and Justice Saman Fafat Imtiaz–sought guidance from the council on the “interference” of the spy agencies in courts’ affairs.
The letter also highlighted the duty of a judge to report any such actions that come to his/her attention in relation to colleagues and/or members of the courts that the High Court supervises. The letter also called for a code of conduct for judges to guide them on how to “react to and/or report incidents that are tantamount to intimidation and interfere with judicial independence”. The IHC judges expressed concern that the current system does not provide adequate guidance for judges in dealing with such situation.