Six judges alleged that the Pakistan Army attempted to influence their verdicts, with now-imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan at the center of the controversy.
Months after Pakistan’s controversial general election, in which results were allegedly manipulated at the behest of the Pakistan Army to deny supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan a majority in parliament, the country has become engulfed in yet another crisis. Last month, six judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) wrote an explosive letter to the Supreme Judicial Council in which they alleged that the country’s military-controlled intelligence agencies, including the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), were coercing senior judges to influence their verdicts. “We believe it is imperative to inquire into and determine whether there exists a continuing policy on part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives…to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters,” the letter said.
At the center of the storm is the now infamous Tyrian White case, which seeks to disqualify Khan from holding public office on the grounds that he concealed the existence of White, a daughter he allegedly fathered out of wedlock, in his election documents. The justices claim that when members of the bench hearing the case questioned whether it met the standards necessary for adjudication, “Considerable pressure was brought to bear on the judges…by operatives of the ISI through friends and relatives of these judges.”
The letter also alleged that surveillance equipment had been found in the private lodgings of one of the justices and that a relative of another was abducted and tortured. In the days following the publication of the letter, a number of senior judges including the entire strength of the Islamabad High Court received threatening letters laced with a toxic powder. Forensic analysis of the substance showed that it contained a nonlethal concentratio