A Troubling Verdict.

The announcement of the verdict by the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on the extrajudicial killing case of Naqeebul lah Mehsud will undoubtedly come as a shock to many.: Five years after the incident took place, the court acquitted Rao Anwar and his subordinates due to unsubstantial evidence of their involvement. It is unclear how the court arrived at this conclusion considering the full judgement has not been released as of yet, but there is no denying that the ruling will have an impact on the debate surrounding the abuse of power and extrajudicial killings by officers of the law.

The complete verdict will allow experts to assess what the court based its judgement upon, but the lawyers of the prosecution team had already identified threats of witnesses resiling statements and missing documentary evidence which took away from the evidence being presented to the court. Add this to the allegations of the defendants being close to corridors of power, it is likely that contentions for this verdict will now be presented by the prosecuting team in higher courts.

With this judgement, the issue of extrajudicial killings...