An Islamabad court has removed a controversial paragraph from its written judgment in the tweets case against human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband Hadi Ali Chatha that had referred to Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Cuba as “terrorist states,” officials confirmed on Friday. The paragraph was part of the original judgment issued on twenty four January by Additional District and Sessions Judge Afzal Majoka.
In the initial ruling, the judge had stated that four countries, namely Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran, and Syria, were designated as terrorist states. The observation prompted a response from Pakistan’s Foreign Office, which clarified that the government does not endorse such a view. Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Hussain Andrabi said there is no official list of terrorist states under United Nations or international law and described the remark as the personal view of the judge, stressing that Pakistan does not support it.
Following the controversy, the prosecution requested the court to expunge the paragraph, calling it a likely clerical error. In the revised written judgment, Judge Majoka termed the reference to the four countries a clerical mistake. He explained that while drafting the judgment, the stenographer had initially removed the names, but they mistakenly reappeared in the final printed version.
The Islamabad court had sentenced Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chatha to seventeen years of rigorous imprisonment each under separate provisions of the law. The judgment, issued under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, stated that the court examined whether the accused promoted the objectives of banned organisations through their tweets, retweets, or posts. It also accused the couple of labelling the State of Pakistan as a terrorist state in their social media activity and alleged alignment with the agendas of banned groups, an interpretation that remains central to the case.
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