LAHORE
After blasphemy-convict Junaid Hafeez’s appeal against his death sentence was finally fixed before the Lahore High Court (LHC) earlier this month, his new lawyer, Saif ul Malook, appears to be mishandling the case, Dissent Today has learnt.
Hafeez, a progressive academic who served as a lecturer at the English Literature department of Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, has been in solitary confinement since 2013 after he was arrested on allegations of blasphemy. In 2019, a trial court in Multan convicted him of blasphemy, sentencing him to death, in a verdict that was termed unfair by human rights groups.
Hafeez’s first counsel, Rashid Rehman, was gunned down in Multan in 2014 amid death threats and a hateful campaign against him by lawyers associated with Barelvi extremist groups.
Differences between Hafeez’s lawyers
During the first hearing of the appeal against the death sentence on April 5, Malook asked the judges to adjourn it because he was “not prepared” and wanted to first meet his client in prison. However, Hafeez’s lead counsel, Asad Jamal, who has been representing him since 2014 after Rahman’s murder, insisted that the hearing should continue as he was prepared to argue.
When one of the judges asked why the case was shifted to Lahore from Multan, Jamal responded that he had petitioned for the case’s transfer to Lahore due to its peculiar history. Before the judge could say anything, Malook interjected, bringing up the murder of the previous counsel, Rahman.
According to Jamal, Malook’s mention of Rahman’s murder had had an “adverse impact” on the judges. “Judges are likely not to hear such a case in which there is so much at stake – including their lives. Mention a murder in a blasphemy appeal and the result is most likely postponement and no relief,” he told Dissent Today, adding that he wanted some progress during the first hearing because the appeal had reached the high court after more than three years.
Jamal briefly presented his arguments before he was asked by Justice Farooq Haider about a specific document from the case file. “It took me 10-15 seconds to locate the document from the case files, because of which the judge told me even I was not prepared, and postponed the hearing.”
The tone set by Malook, at the start of the hearing, Jamal believes, left a negative impression on the judges.
Surprisingly, both lawyers have not discussed the case with each other so far, and are clearly not on the same page. Jamal claims he reached out to Malook before the hearing, asking what their strategy would be, but the latter did not respond.
Saif ul Malook did not respond to Dissent Today’s request for comment.
Extremist groups back in action
Meanwhile, the lawyers who were involved in the campaign against Rashid Rehman prior to his murder have once again become active in the Junaid Hafeez case.
Advocate Zulfiqar Sidhu, who led the campaign against Rashid Rehman ahead of his murder, is an influential lawyer and was made assistant advocate general during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government in 2018. He recently submitted his power of attorney on behalf of a witness against Junaid Hafeez who was an associate professor in Agronomy at the university. Advocate Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry, who is the president of Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Lawyers Forum (a group that voluntarily prosecutes blasphemy-accused and assists anyone filing a blasphemy case), also recently joined hands with Sidhu and will be contesting Junaid Hafeez’s appeal against the death sentence.
Jamal terms Malook’s act of building “unnecessary hype” around the case as the reason for their renewed interest.
Saif ul Malook’s entry into the scene
On March 12 last year, Malook announced on Twitter that he met Junaid Hafeez and would be representing him in his appeal against the death sentence. But Junaid Hafeez had not
signed the power of attorney for Malook then, as it was signed on March 26, 2022.
Met Junaid Hafeez in central prison Multan today a death convict on blasphemy allegations. He is in good health and spirits. He appointed me his lawyer for his appeal in Lahore High Court.
— Saif-ul-malook (@Saifulm32731039) March 12, 2022
According to sources, Junaid Hafeez had initially declined Malook’s offer to represent him during their first meeting in Multan jail, but Malook made the announcement on Twitter anyway. It was 14 days after Malook’s tweet that Hafeez signed his power of attorney (a copy of which is available with Dissent Today), reportedly when Hafeez’s father convinced him to do so.
Sources further reveal that Malook had first tried to convince Hafeez to give him the power of attorney in January of 2020, but he had declined then too. Malook then held meetings with Hafeez’s father in Multan, who eventually convinced Hafeez to let Malook represent him.
‘Hearing may be further delayed’
Although the hearing has now been postponed till May 29, Jamal anticipates further delay because the judges were not clear. “Had the case been at least partially heard on April 5 instead of being postponed, it would have been fixed the week after,” he says.
Aside from the postponement of the hearing, Jamal also disagrees with Malook’s use of social media to release information about the case, given its precarious history and the involvement of extremist groups. Malook had tweeted about the April 5 hearing a day prior.
“Given the sensitivity around blasphemy laws, lawyers releasing such information in advance of the hearings is counterproductive,” Jamal says.
Loopholes in trial
Hafeez’s trial leading to his conviction and death sentence was marred by several loopholes, none of which have been duly addressed. During the trial between 2013 and 2019, seven judges hearing the case were transferred or distanced themselves from the case, raising questions on the fairness of the trial.
Hafeez’s first counsel, Rashid Rehman, was gunned down in Multan in 2014 amid a hateful campaign including direct death threats against him by lawyers associated with Barelvi extremist groups. His murder alone was enough to hamper a fair trial, as the extremist groups and lawyers allegedly behind the incident wield significant influence in Multan, where the case was being heard.
The extremist campaign initiated against Rehman continued even after his murder. On May 8, 2014, a day after his murder, unsigned pamphlets were distributed in Multan, saying Rehman met his ‘rightful end’ for trying to save someone who ‘disrespected’ Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). “We warn all lawyers to be afraid of God and think twice before engaging in such acts,” the pamphlet had said.
This series of events, among others, explains why Junaid Hafeez was convicted and given the death sentence despite the prosecution not having a strong case against him. Earlier during the trial, there were times when it appeared that the case against Hafeez would be thrown out due to serious discrepancies in the prosecution’s version.
In December 2014, seven months after Rehman’s murder, Shahbaz Paracha, a judge who was hearing the case, had told defense counsel Jamal that he wanted to adjudicate the case without delay. “Hafeez specially sent a message asking me to attend the hearing on Dec. 13, 2014, but I was not prepared to cross-examine the witness then. I informed the judge that since I didn’t have the complete case file, I would not be able to cross examine the witness. He told me to read the court file instead,” Jamal says.
“The judge had told me to return to the court in two days, and when I sought more time to prepare the case, he said he could grant me time till the 17th. ‘Return to the court on the 17th. I want to decide the case,’ the judge had said, as he looked me in the eye.”
Jamal says he could see that the judge had realized that the case was baseless, and that he had to somehow clean the stigma of Rashid Rehman’s murder. It was in his court that Rehman had been threatened with dire consequences if he continued to represent Hafeez.
“I knew that judge Paracha was going to acquit Junaid Hafeez sooner than later,” Jamal says.
But two days ahead of the hearing on December 17, 2014 – when Hafeez’s acquittal was likely – the judge was transferred to Faisalabad and the case was delayed. According to the defence counsel, all judges who showed their inclination to acquit Hafeez were transferred. Seven judges were transferred between December 2014 and December 2019 when the verdict was delivered. The trial was delayed due to the transfers as well as non-appearance of witnesses.
What exactly is the case against Junaid Hafeez?
The initial complaint against Junaid Hafeez as recorded in the FIR had stated that he was the admin of a secret Facebook group called “So-called Liberals of Pakistan” and was guilty of blasphemy because he did not delete a blasphemous post shared in the group by an unidentified user “Mullah Munafiq”. But according to the prosecution’s evidence submitted in the form of printed Facebook posts, the secret FB group as well as the alleged account by Hafeez’s name had continued to be operated even after Hafeez’s arrest on March 13, 2013, indicating that he was neither in control nor operating them.
About 6 months after Hafeez was arrested, the prosecution brought on court record new witnesses who claimed to have seen Hafeez commit blasphemy while addressing a launch ceremony of a British-Pakistani author Qasra Shahraz’s two books about women’s status in society. The complaint also stated that said books contained blasphemous content, and were an attempt to “provoke women against Islam”. But during the cross examination when the prosecution’s witness, a student at BZU, was asked by defense counsel Asad Jamal about the contents of the book, it emerged that he could not properly read English. He then changed his statement, and said he was “informed” by some other students that the books were blasphemous.
‘Misogyny at the heart of conspiracy against Hafeez’
The blasphemy case against Hafeez, Asad Jamal says, was part of a conspiracy hatched by a group at Bahauddin Zakariya University and was originally meant to simultaneously target the head of the department, Shirin Zubair, but she survived the vicious attack due to her status and connections.
Professor Shirin Zubair, head of the university’s English language and literature department, was a candidate in the varsity’s syndicate elections in 2013. Had she won the elections, she would have had a better chance to later become the Vice Chancellor of the university where she had served for almost 30 years – something a group of male faculty members, who were opposed to her promotion because of her gender and her liberal worldview, did not want.
“Since Shirin Zubair reposed trust in Hafeez because of his academic excellence, the group that wanted to get rid of her thought she could be intimidated into stepping aside with such a campaign against him,” Asad Jamal told Dissent Today.
Following the blasphemy complaint against Hafeez, Shireen withdrew her candidature and eventually left the country. Those who hatched the conspiracy to keep a woman from reaching the post of Vice Chancellor were successful.
The defense counsel had in 2015 tried to get Shireen to appear as a witness for Junaid Hafeez, but she was not willing to come forward due to security concerns.
‘Students who accused Hafeez of blasphemy were never in his classes’
The original complainants in the case were two BZU students of English department Rana Akbar and Muhammad Rafique, who had graduated and left the university in 2012. But the complaint was registered in the name of a police sub-inspector. Later on, Professor Hakoomat Ali, a faculty member of the Agronomy department along with a group of four students of Islamic Studies and Physics departments, also became witnesses.
Interestingly, none of the five students who appeared as witnesses against Junaid Hafeez had ever been his students. Four of them studied at different departments, while one of them was from the English department, but had never taken a class with Hafeez or been his class fellow. In his cross-examination, he had told the court that he had never seen Hafeez utter anything blasphemous. But he went on to claim that Hafeez was running a “blasphemous campaign of liberal views” in his classes and on social media. On further questioning, he had informed the court that he was neither connected with Hafeez as a friend on Facebook nor was he a member of the secret group, but still “knew” that Hafeez was operating it.
The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She tweets @AiliaZehra and can be reached at ailiazehra2012@gmail.com
