ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Law and Justice Farogh Naseem said on Friday the government had passed a law related to Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav to fulfil the instructions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), calling it a matter of national security.
A joint sitting of parliament on Wednesday passed the International Court of Justice (Review and Re-consideration) Bill, 2020, to provide the right of review and reconsideration in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case.
Jadhav is an Indian national who was arrested in March 2016 during a counter-intelligence operation in Pakistan.
According to Pakistani officials, he served as a commander in Indian Navy and was involved in subversive activities inside Pakistan.
In April 2017, he was sentenced to death by a Field General Court Martial in Pakistan, though the ICJ issued a stay order against the verdict in May.
The international court in a July 2019 judgment also directed Pakistan to conduct an “effective review and reconsideration including, if necessary, by enacting an appropriate legislation” in the case.
“This is a national security issue,” the law minister said while addressing a press conference here in Islamabad along with the parliamentary secretary for law and justice Maleeka Bokhari.
“We have cut off India’s hands through this legislation,” he said while maintaining it was not a person-specific law. “This is also for the times to come.”
The minister said India was planning to move a contempt notice against Pakistan in the ICJ to get sanctions imposed on the country through the United Nations Security Council if this legislation was not done.
“These vicious designs of India have now been thwarted,” he said, adding the Indian authorities went to the ICJ after a consular access to Jadhav was denied and the court gave an interim order against Pakistan.
“Indian prayer [to the ICJ] was that Kulbhushan should be acquitted,” he said. “The ICJ has rejected that prayer. To that extent, Pakistan has won this case.”
The minister criticized the opposition for railing against the legislation without considering Pakistan’s national interest. “Instead of appreciating this [law], you [the opposition] have turned it into a political tool,” he said.
Responding to the opposition’s statement that even the United States did not accept the ICJ decisions, the minister said Pakistan was a responsible state that followed its international obligations.
“We have to play on our own strengths,” he said. “We are not a banana republic.”
Meanwhile, the parliamentary secretary for law and justice clarified the government had removed a clause from a new criminal law passed on Wednesday through the joint sitting of parliament that allowed chemical castration as punishment for serial rapists.
“As per the new law, identity of a victim [in rape cases] has been protected as trial in the cases will be held in-camera,” she said, adding that special courts would be established to provide speedy justice in such cases.
