Pakistan round-up: No Indian lawyer for Jadhav, Saeed's aides convicted & more

Pakistan has said that it was not legally possible to allow a lawyer from India to represent Indian prisoner on death row Kulbhushan Jadhav in a court in the country.

Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri was asked at the weekly press briefing about India's demand to appoint a local counsel to plead Jadhav's case in the Islamabad high court which announced that it would hear the case on September 3.

"The Indian side has been also making incongruous demands of allowing an Indian lawyer to represent Commander Jadhav. We have repeatedly told them only those lawyers can represent Commander Jadhav in the court who have a licence to practise law in Pakistan. This is in accordance with legal practice in other jurisdictions also," he was quoted as saying by Dawn news.

The spokesman also said that the Indian Supreme Court, in one of its judgments, also ruled that foreign lawyers cannot practise law within the country.

According to Dawn newspaper, Chaudhri asked India to cooperate with Pakistan in implementing the ICJ judgement.

Jadhav, the 50-year-old retired Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "espionage and terrorism" in April 2017.

Last week, Pakistan's Opposition-dominated Senate rejected two bills related to the tough conditions set by the FATF, jeopardising the government's efforts to escape from being blacklisted by the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.

The move drew a strong reaction from Prime Minister Imran Khan who accused the opposition leaders of trying to "save their illegal money", according to a report in The Express Tribune.

The Anti-Money Laundering (Second Amendment) Bill and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Waqf Properties Bill, passed by the National Assembly a day before, were rejected through a voice vote by the Senate on August 25.

The legislations were part of efforts by Pakistan to move from the FATF'S grey list to the white list.

The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put Pakistan on the grey list in June 2018 and asked Islamabad to implement a plan of action by the end of 2019 but the deadline was extended later on due to COVID-19.

The 104-member Senate, where the Opposition enjoys a majority, rejected two bills after Leader of the House Shahzad Waseem refused to tender an apology for remarks that he made against the Opposition leadership last week, Dawn newspaper said.

At least 163 people have been killed and 101 others injured in rain-related incidents in Pakistan during the annual monsoon season in the country, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said on Monday.

Twenty nine people were killed in the last 24 hours, including 27 in Sindh province and the rest in Punjab.

According to the NDMA data, since June 15, a total of 61 people have been killed in Sindh, 48 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 17 in Balochistan, 16 in Punjab, 11 in Gilgit-Baltistan region and 10 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

“Those killed included 80 males, 17 females and 66 children,” it said.

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan on Friday sentenced three senior leaders of Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) and close aides of Hafiz Saeed to over 16 years in prison for terror financing.

Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki and Hafiz Abdus Salam, who were released on bail two weeks ago after the Lahore high court suspended their sentence in a terror financing case, are among the three leaders who were sentenced by the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Lahore in another terror financing case.

"The ATC sentenced Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Abdus Salam bin Muhammad for 16 and a half years in another terror financing case. A fine of Rs 150,000 on each of them was also imposed," a court official said after the verdict was pronounced in the presence of the suspects.

"Hafiz Saeed's brother-in-law Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki has also been handed down the one-and-a-half-year sentence in the same case. A fine of Rs 20,000 was also imposed on him," the official said, adding that high-security measures were taken during the court hearing.

Pakistan has registered 300 more coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 296,149, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

Another four patients died overnight due to the disease, pushing the Covid-19 death toll to 6,298, it said.

While 280,970 people have so far recovered from the deadly viral infection, 589 others are in critical condition.

Sindh has reported the maximum number of 129,469 coronavirus cases, followed by Punjab at 96,832, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa at 36,118, Islamabad at 15,649, Balochistan at 12,879, Gilgit-Baltistan at 2,903 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir at 2,299.

The authorities have so far conducted a total of 2,642,028 tests to detect the viral infection, the ministry said.

Pakistani regulators have asked YouTube to immediately block all videos they consider "objectionable" from being accessed in the country, a demand criticised by rights campaigners.

In a statement last week, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said it has asked YouTube to "immediately block vulgar, indecent, immoral, nude and hate speech content for viewing in Pakistan".

According to a report in The News, the PTA said viewing such content has "extremely negative effects" and can foster "repugnant discord".

In July, the PTA issued a final warning to Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, ordering it to filter any obscene content.

It also blocked the video-streaming app Bigo Live, though the ban was lifted after a few days once the platform agreed to moderate "immoral and indecent content".