ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Senate on Tuesday approved amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) empowering security agencies to detain suspects of terrorism and other serious crimes for up to three months, a move the government says will help fight militancy and address the country’s longstanding issue of enforced disappearances.
The Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2025, passed by the National Assembly last week, will now go to the president for assent before becoming law.
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar defended the measure while speaking in parliament, saying it created a lawful framework for preventive detention that would strengthen counterterrorism operations.
“This will be a lawful process and there will be no enforced disappearances anymore,” Tarar told lawmakers, adding that the legislation was aimed at combating militancy and contained safeguards to prevent misuse.
Enforced disappearances have long been a contentious issue in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan, the site of a decades-old separatist insurgency and where families and rights groups accuse state institutions of arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings. Authorities deny the allegations but the practice has remained a source of domestic and international criticism.
By creating a legal mechanism for short-term preventive detention, the government says the new law will replace illegal practices and address concerns raised by families of missing persons.
The amended law comes as Pakistan grapples with twin insurgencies: religiously motivated groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who operate mainly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and ethno-nationalist Baloch separatists fighting against the state in southwestern Balochistan.
Pakistan became the world’s second-most affected by terrorist violence in 2024, with deaths rising 45 percent to 1,081, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2025.
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
The amendment allows the government, armed forces and civil armed forces to place terrorism suspects under preventive detention for up to 90 days, based on credible information or reasonable suspicion. Enforcement in provinces will require approval from respective governments, and detainees will have legal recourse through federal and provincial review boards made up of Supreme Court and high court judges.
The bill also gives legal cover to joint interrogation teams (JITs) comprising officials from multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies, with the aim of making operations more effective.
Opposition parties, including jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), strongly opposed the amendment in the Senate, warning that it could be misused against government critics.
“The amendment undermines constitutional freedoms,” PTI Senator Ali Zafar told Arab News, citing Articles 9, 10A and 19 of the Constitution, which guarantee security of person, fair trial and freedom of speech.
“While we must protect lives from terrorism, we also have to safeguard constitutional rights, without which Pakistan cannot be called a democracy,” Zafar said. “Counterterrorism does not mean counter-democracy. The law must be targeted, precise and just.”
Legal expert Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed said the effect of the new law would depend on whether it truly did away with the practice of enforced disappearances.
“If the amended law means that security and law enforcement agencies will now only detain people, then it could have a net positive effect,” he told Arab News.
“If, on the other hand, it merely means yet another legal method … while enforced disappearances continue unabated side by side, then obviously it will only be another tool of repression.”
