New Delhi: After the International Court of Justice decided in India’s favour and stayed Kulbhushan Jadhav’s death sentence till the pendency of the case, Pakistan’s Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf Ali will on Thursday lead a team to the world court, seeking appointment of an ad-hoc judge from Pakistan’s side in the case.
The decision to appoint the Attorney-General to lead the Pakistan team at The Hague was taken at a Parliamentary Committee meeting on National Security, according to the Pakistani press.
Jadhav, was tried by a military court in Pakistan and awarded death sentence on charges of spying and posing as a threat to the national security. Recently, Pakistan had issued a statement clarifying that Jadhav will not be executed till he “exhausts all his mercy appeals” and according to the law he has two appeals left, one with the Pakistani Army Chief and the other with the President of Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson, Nafees Zakaria said that India’s petition at the world court was about Jadhav’s entitlement to consular access and not about whether the ICJ can act as Court of appeal for Pakistani legal proceedings.
It has also been reported in the Pakistani media that the country will be indicating its intention to nominate an ad-hoc judge for the case, taking into account the ICJ statute.
The ICJ statute provides that a state, which is party to a case but does not have a judge of its nationality on the bench, can choose a person to sit as an ad-hoc judge in that case.
This development comes close on the heels of the comment made by Justice Dalveer Bhandari, the sole Indian judge on the panel of ICJ judges, who said that the “basic human rights of Kulbhushan Jadhav was violated by not allowing India to have consular access to him after his arrest and during the pendency of the criminal proceedings against him in Pakistan.”
According to The Nation, a Pakistan-based newspaper, Pakistan will recommend three names to the world court for appointment as ad-hoc judges to hear the case. The delegation led by the Attorney General will present these names to the UN court.
Former chief justices of Pakistan (CJP) Nasirul Mulk and Tassaduq Husin Jeelani and former attorney general Makhdoom Ali have been recommended to be the ad-hoc appointees at the UN court, according to The Nation.
Lately, Pakistan has also claimed that Jadhav was providing them with “crucial intelligence” about the recent spate of terrorist attacks in the country.
This ICJ meeting will also be in the backdrop of petitions being filed in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, urging it to expedite the hanging of Jadhav as “international law was not binding on Pakistan”.
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