Islamabad: The upper house of Pakistan’s parliament on Tuesday passed a constitutional amendment bill designed to reinstate special military courts for speedy trial of civilians accused of involvement in terrorism.
The 100-member Senate adopted the bill by a two-thirds majority.
It had earlier endorsed a bill amending the Army Act for the same purpose.
Both bills were passed last week by the National Assembly, the 342-member lower house of parliament, after parliamentary parties agreed to support the bills for revival of military courts deemed necessary in the ongoing fight against terrorism.
After signatures by the president, the bills are expected to come into force as Acts of parliament in the coming days.
About a dozen military courts were set up at the beginning of 2015 in the wake of a terrorist attack on an army-run public school in Peshawar that killed around 150 people, mostly students.
These courts ceased to function on January 7 upon expiry of their two-year tenure.
The tribunals had tried more than 240 cases, handing down the death penalty to 161 accused — 21 of whom had been executed so far in different jails.
The main opposition Pakistan People’s Party had at first called for reduction of tenure for the revived tribunals to a year, but later dropped the demand.
Critics of the bills say instead of continuing trials of civilians by military courts the government should have introduced judicial reforms to strengthen the criminal justice system for effectively dealing with terrorism-related offences.
A comprehensive military operation code-named Zarb-e-Azb was launched in 2014, dismantling terrorist infrastructure in the tribal territory bordering Afghanistan in the northwest, killing thousands of suspected terrorists and destroying militants’ hideouts.
Last month, the army kicked off a supplementary new offensive called ‘Rad Al Fissad’ aimed at eliminating “residual/latent” threat of terrorism through countrywide intelligence-based operations, hunting down terrorist elements and their facilitators.
