Back to Law & Order: Pakistan Law & Order: Pakistan
August 06, 2011
Rick Westhead
Lahore police senior superintendent Sajjad Hassan Khan Manj outside his station house. Manj says Lahore police are beginning to improve the use of forensics in investigations.
Rick Westhead/TORONTO STAR
LAHORE, PAKISTANOne morning in the spring, a senior official with the Lahore police department issued a memo to the citys 77 police stations about a new, state-of-the-art crime-fighting tool: spools of yellow police tape.
The excited officer explained to the citys 900 investigators that the tape should be used to mark off crime scenes. Police, he wrote, should be careful not to destroy footprints, fingerprints and other evidence at the scene, and should not clean up.
Most of our guys want to have crime scenes spic and span before senior officers get there, says Sajjad Hassan Khan Manj, Lahores police senior superintendent.
Pakistans criminal justice system abounds with such stories.
When measuring Pakistans battle against extremism, foreign governments and analysts tend to scrutinize the armys battle against militants in the Swat Valley and Waziristan, a lawless stretch of mountain ranges bordering Afghanistan. The army is a well-oiled fighting machine that consumes an estimated 60 per cent of Pakistans public spending and is considered one of the few well-run public institutions in the country.
Lost in the conversation is Pakistans beleaguered police force and archaic criminal prosecution system. They are daily on the frontline of the battle against one of the worlds fiercest insurgencies, a fight that has resulted in an estimated 9,620 civilian deaths since 2003.
Pakistans police force is understaffed and poorly trained, senior officers concede. Like most government departments here, it is rife with corruption. And the widespread mostly correct belief that criminals can get to anyone at any time means that most witnesses refuse to testify.
The numbers tell the story. An estimated 98 per cent of those accused of serious crimes in Pakistan are acquitted, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Most cases dont even go to trial.
Its totally messed up, says Ayesha Tammy Haq, a Karachi lawyer and media personality.
Khawaja Haris Ahmad, a former prosecutor and advocate general for the province of Punjab, despairs as he routinely sees police botching the collection of evidence and manipulating their daily logs.
On Jan. 3, three days after a U.S. spy named Raymond Davis was arrested for killing two Pakistani thieves trying to rob him in Lahore, Ahmad asked senior police officials for the case file.
It was three days and even with a case like this they hadnt written a word, Ahmad says. There was no report.
A day later, Ahmad watched a newscast from the street where the shootings occurred. The ground was littered with bullet casings, and a journalist was interviewing an eyewitness who worked at a nearby hotel. The witness still hadnt been contacted by detectives.
Police . . . have no clue how to find blood, pieces of hair, cloth or weapons, without jeopardizing evidence, Ahmad says.
While Davis admitted to shooting his assailants, he was subsequently released from custody and returned to the U.S.
In May, Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad, a critic of the military and intelligence services, was found murdered in his car.
Ahmad says police returned the car to Shahzads family without having searched for blood splatters or fingerprints.
How does that happen? he asks.
Critics dont just point to shortcomings within Pakistans police force. On the rare occasions when evidence is collected, witnesses are corralled and a good case is established, theres still no assurance of justice. Pakistans security situation is so bad that some prosecutors and judges are loath to handle prominent cases.
In January, Salman Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab, was murdered by a police commando as he left an Islamabad restaurant.
Almost immediately after his funeral, Haq, the Karachi lawyer, and Taseers sister-in-law began working to bring Taseers killer to justice.
Haq first found a 75-year-old criminal lawyer who agreed to become special prosecutor.
The day after he agreed, 400 people showed up at his home and told him, Even though you are old, your grandchildren are not, Haq recalls.
The lawyer quit.
Even eyewitness testimony can be difficult to introduce at trial. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the militant extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, was accused in the terrorist siege on Mumbai in November 2008 but was recently released from custody.
Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving Pakistani terrorist who stormed Mumbai, testified at his trial that he met Saeed during his training. He also testified that Saeeds instructions to the terrorists were not to be taken alive and to begin their attack at 7:30 p.m. to hit big crowds.
But because Kasabs testimony was in an Indian court, it was inadmissible in Pakistan.
They had nothing, laughs A.K. Doggar, Saeeds lawyer. No voice tapes, nothing. There was no case.
But Pakistans criminal justice problems can hardly be blamed entirely on prosecutors.
The countrys criminal code dates back to the British Raj, and even after Pakistans independence in 1947, there have been setbacks to the justice system.
In 1990, military dictator Zia ul-Haq introduced an Islamic provision called blood money that allowed criminals charged with murder to settle their cases with victims families, effectively bypassing the system as was the case with the American Raymond Davis.
Frightened families, fearful for their safety and doubtful that they would get justice in any event, often take the money, allowing murderers to remain free.
Ul-Haq allowed the police free rein to adopt the law for other charges, says Asma Jahangir, chair of Pakistans Supreme Court Bar Association. The wheels just fell off, she says. If a murder charge could be compromised, why couldnt everything else?
In 1996, Benazir Bhuttos brother, the politician Murtaza Bhutto, was killed in an encounter with police. During an inquiry into his death, it was revealed cleaners in hospitals were routinely conducting post-mortem exams, Jahangir says.
The doctors were Muslims and they said simply that they couldnt touch dead bodies, she says. So they had the Christian cleaners do them. Thats been the state of our systems.
In 2002, under another military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, the government introduced a series of reforms.
One ensured that senior police officers would remain in their positions for three years before a possible transfer a move designed to stop politicians from meddling. Another called for the creation of a police complaint commission.
Nine years on, those reforms are long forgotten.
They were good, but some of the reforms were killed by Musharraf and the rest were done for because the new government doesnt want anything that came up under Musharraf, says Shoaib Suddle, former director general of Pakistans National Police Bureau.
In 2003, Suddle created a national DNA databank with funding from the Asian Development Bank. Even with modern technology, police were nonplussed about the chance to clear cases, Suddle says.
We would get maybe three or four samples sent in a month from various police forces, he says. Sadly, most police just didnt care about whether they solved cases. Theyre there to get promoted, and because promotions are based on cronyism and not merit, it doesnt matter how they perform.
Of course, in a country where debating conspiracies is an art form, there are many theories for why investigations are thwarted.
Aitzaz Ahsan, a Cambridge-educated lawyer and former minister for law and justice, recalls that on Dec. 25, 2003, then-president Musharraf was nearly killed in an attack by two suicide bombers. Police found a charred cellphone at the scene of the blast.
The chances that the terrorists SIM was still functional seemed dim, Musharraf wrote in his biography, In the Line of Fire, but to our surprise, when we put it in another phone, it worked. Thus we not only obtained a lot of phone numbers from the SIM itself, but were able to get many more from the call record at the cellphone company.
Yet years later, when Benazir Bhutto was twice attacked by bomb blasts, the second time fatally in 2007, police immediately washed down the crime scene with power hoses, effectively destroying any chance to recover evidence.
Come on, when they want to, police know how to preserve a crime scene, Ahsan says. They have done it even in villages for 100 years, covering footprints with pots and pans until the police come.
Still, there are reasons for optimism.
Lahore senior superintendent Manj sits in front of a new computer and explains that Lahore police are in the midst of rolling out a system that will link the citys police stations, allowing the citys 27,000 officers to use an intranet system to immediately access criminal records, trial dates, case notes and other information.
Were hoping soon to move on to biometrics, Manj said. As it is now, we have to check fingerprints against a physical ink card. Its impossible.
But this is still Pakistan, of course, so every morsel of good news seems to come with a cloud of uncertainty.
The police computer system in Lahore was set to roll out in 2005. But after spending more than $1 million, senior officials lost interest.
At least there are the spools of police tape.
Manj escorts several visitors outside to a red-and-blue police truck labelled mobile forensics.
The tapes in here, Manj says.
But after a 10-minute search of the van, he comes up empty.
Sorry, Manj says with a sigh. I guess the tape has gone somewhere else.
Pakistans trial of the century drags on and on and on . . .
On Nov. 26, 2008, 10 terrorists stormed the beach of Mumbai and laid a three-day siege to the city that left more than 160 dead. Since then, the wheels of justice in Pakistan have turned slowly.
March 2009: The in-camera trial of seven alleged terrorists begins at a high-security jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Oct. 21, 2009: After months of adjournments, the judge hearing the case, Baqir Ali Rana, says he had to quit the proceedings, citing unavoidable reasons.
Feb. 13, 2010: After the defendants argue that they should be freed because of delays and lack of evidence, the case is adjourned again. The judge says he is busy.
January to March 2011: There are seven more adjournments.
June 2011: There is another adjournment because the second judge has been transferred and no new judge has been found.(http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1035492--law-order-pakistan)
August 06, 2011
Rick Westhead
Rick Westhead/TORONTO STAR
LAHORE, PAKISTANOne morning in the spring, a senior official with the Lahore police department issued a memo to the citys 77 police stations about a new, state-of-the-art crime-fighting tool: spools of yellow police tape.
The excited officer explained to the citys 900 investigators that the tape should be used to mark off crime scenes. Police, he wrote, should be careful not to destroy footprints, fingerprints and other evidence at the scene, and should not clean up.
Most of our guys want to have crime scenes spic and span before senior officers get there, says Sajjad Hassan Khan Manj, Lahores police senior superintendent.
Pakistans criminal justice system abounds with such stories.
When measuring Pakistans battle against extremism, foreign governments and analysts tend to scrutinize the armys battle against militants in the Swat Valley and Waziristan, a lawless stretch of mountain ranges bordering Afghanistan. The army is a well-oiled fighting machine that consumes an estimated 60 per cent of Pakistans public spending and is considered one of the few well-run public institutions in the country.
Lost in the conversation is Pakistans beleaguered police force and archaic criminal prosecution system. They are daily on the frontline of the battle against one of the worlds fiercest insurgencies, a fight that has resulted in an estimated 9,620 civilian deaths since 2003.
Pakistans police force is understaffed and poorly trained, senior officers concede. Like most government departments here, it is rife with corruption. And the widespread mostly correct belief that criminals can get to anyone at any time means that most witnesses refuse to testify.
The numbers tell the story. An estimated 98 per cent of those accused of serious crimes in Pakistan are acquitted, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Most cases dont even go to trial.
Its totally messed up, says Ayesha Tammy Haq, a Karachi lawyer and media personality.
Khawaja Haris Ahmad, a former prosecutor and advocate general for the province of Punjab, despairs as he routinely sees police botching the collection of evidence and manipulating their daily logs.
On Jan. 3, three days after a U.S. spy named Raymond Davis was arrested for killing two Pakistani thieves trying to rob him in Lahore, Ahmad asked senior police officials for the case file.
It was three days and even with a case like this they hadnt written a word, Ahmad says. There was no report.
A day later, Ahmad watched a newscast from the street where the shootings occurred. The ground was littered with bullet casings, and a journalist was interviewing an eyewitness who worked at a nearby hotel. The witness still hadnt been contacted by detectives.
Police . . . have no clue how to find blood, pieces of hair, cloth or weapons, without jeopardizing evidence, Ahmad says.
While Davis admitted to shooting his assailants, he was subsequently released from custody and returned to the U.S.
In May, Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad, a critic of the military and intelligence services, was found murdered in his car.
Ahmad says police returned the car to Shahzads family without having searched for blood splatters or fingerprints.
How does that happen? he asks.
Critics dont just point to shortcomings within Pakistans police force. On the rare occasions when evidence is collected, witnesses are corralled and a good case is established, theres still no assurance of justice. Pakistans security situation is so bad that some prosecutors and judges are loath to handle prominent cases.
In January, Salman Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab, was murdered by a police commando as he left an Islamabad restaurant.
Almost immediately after his funeral, Haq, the Karachi lawyer, and Taseers sister-in-law began working to bring Taseers killer to justice.
Haq first found a 75-year-old criminal lawyer who agreed to become special prosecutor.
The day after he agreed, 400 people showed up at his home and told him, Even though you are old, your grandchildren are not, Haq recalls.
The lawyer quit.
Even eyewitness testimony can be difficult to introduce at trial. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the militant extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, was accused in the terrorist siege on Mumbai in November 2008 but was recently released from custody.
Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving Pakistani terrorist who stormed Mumbai, testified at his trial that he met Saeed during his training. He also testified that Saeeds instructions to the terrorists were not to be taken alive and to begin their attack at 7:30 p.m. to hit big crowds.
But because Kasabs testimony was in an Indian court, it was inadmissible in Pakistan.
They had nothing, laughs A.K. Doggar, Saeeds lawyer. No voice tapes, nothing. There was no case.
But Pakistans criminal justice problems can hardly be blamed entirely on prosecutors.
The countrys criminal code dates back to the British Raj, and even after Pakistans independence in 1947, there have been setbacks to the justice system.
In 1990, military dictator Zia ul-Haq introduced an Islamic provision called blood money that allowed criminals charged with murder to settle their cases with victims families, effectively bypassing the system as was the case with the American Raymond Davis.
Frightened families, fearful for their safety and doubtful that they would get justice in any event, often take the money, allowing murderers to remain free.
Ul-Haq allowed the police free rein to adopt the law for other charges, says Asma Jahangir, chair of Pakistans Supreme Court Bar Association. The wheels just fell off, she says. If a murder charge could be compromised, why couldnt everything else?
In 1996, Benazir Bhuttos brother, the politician Murtaza Bhutto, was killed in an encounter with police. During an inquiry into his death, it was revealed cleaners in hospitals were routinely conducting post-mortem exams, Jahangir says.
The doctors were Muslims and they said simply that they couldnt touch dead bodies, she says. So they had the Christian cleaners do them. Thats been the state of our systems.
In 2002, under another military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, the government introduced a series of reforms.
One ensured that senior police officers would remain in their positions for three years before a possible transfer a move designed to stop politicians from meddling. Another called for the creation of a police complaint commission.
Nine years on, those reforms are long forgotten.
They were good, but some of the reforms were killed by Musharraf and the rest were done for because the new government doesnt want anything that came up under Musharraf, says Shoaib Suddle, former director general of Pakistans National Police Bureau.
In 2003, Suddle created a national DNA databank with funding from the Asian Development Bank. Even with modern technology, police were nonplussed about the chance to clear cases, Suddle says.
We would get maybe three or four samples sent in a month from various police forces, he says. Sadly, most police just didnt care about whether they solved cases. Theyre there to get promoted, and because promotions are based on cronyism and not merit, it doesnt matter how they perform.
Of course, in a country where debating conspiracies is an art form, there are many theories for why investigations are thwarted.
Aitzaz Ahsan, a Cambridge-educated lawyer and former minister for law and justice, recalls that on Dec. 25, 2003, then-president Musharraf was nearly killed in an attack by two suicide bombers. Police found a charred cellphone at the scene of the blast.
The chances that the terrorists SIM was still functional seemed dim, Musharraf wrote in his biography, In the Line of Fire, but to our surprise, when we put it in another phone, it worked. Thus we not only obtained a lot of phone numbers from the SIM itself, but were able to get many more from the call record at the cellphone company.
Yet years later, when Benazir Bhutto was twice attacked by bomb blasts, the second time fatally in 2007, police immediately washed down the crime scene with power hoses, effectively destroying any chance to recover evidence.
Come on, when they want to, police know how to preserve a crime scene, Ahsan says. They have done it even in villages for 100 years, covering footprints with pots and pans until the police come.
Still, there are reasons for optimism.
Lahore senior superintendent Manj sits in front of a new computer and explains that Lahore police are in the midst of rolling out a system that will link the citys police stations, allowing the citys 27,000 officers to use an intranet system to immediately access criminal records, trial dates, case notes and other information.
Were hoping soon to move on to biometrics, Manj said. As it is now, we have to check fingerprints against a physical ink card. Its impossible.
But this is still Pakistan, of course, so every morsel of good news seems to come with a cloud of uncertainty.
The police computer system in Lahore was set to roll out in 2005. But after spending more than $1 million, senior officials lost interest.
At least there are the spools of police tape.
Manj escorts several visitors outside to a red-and-blue police truck labelled mobile forensics.
The tapes in here, Manj says.
But after a 10-minute search of the van, he comes up empty.
Sorry, Manj says with a sigh. I guess the tape has gone somewhere else.
Pakistans trial of the century drags on and on and on . . .
On Nov. 26, 2008, 10 terrorists stormed the beach of Mumbai and laid a three-day siege to the city that left more than 160 dead. Since then, the wheels of justice in Pakistan have turned slowly.
March 2009: The in-camera trial of seven alleged terrorists begins at a high-security jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Oct. 21, 2009: After months of adjournments, the judge hearing the case, Baqir Ali Rana, says he had to quit the proceedings, citing unavoidable reasons.
Feb. 13, 2010: After the defendants argue that they should be freed because of delays and lack of evidence, the case is adjourned again. The judge says he is busy.
January to March 2011: There are seven more adjournments.
June 2011: There is another adjournment because the second judge has been transferred and no new judge has been found.(http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1035492--law-order-pakistan)
