Former Supreme Court Bar Association president and lawyer for former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani, Asma Jehangir has said that she did not feel the need to appear before the commission probing the “memogate” because if Supreme Court judges could not see through the grey area in the case, she doubted that high court judges in the commission could do the same.
Speaking in Geo News Capital Talk, Asma said high court judges were not supposed to investigate cases and collect evidence. Asked why had she expressed lack of trust in the commission when her client had not, she said she had been forced to think that way after seeing all nine SC judges thinking alike and putting national security over and above basic human rights. She said lawyers had not worked to restore the incumbent judiciary to see it cut the very roots of the people and deny them basic human rights in the name of national security. She said the petition would have been maintainable in the first place if the piece of paper [memo] had actually sabotaged somebody’s basic right, but it did not.
She said if basic human rights were compromised in the name of national security today, then a day would come that the freedom of press, freedom of association and existence of political parties could also be sacrificed for the same cause. She said her client would have no where to go and no forum to plead his case if the high court judges made mistake in their investigation. “If courts do not follow due process than there is no difference between a panchayat and a court,” she said.
