Pakistan’s Punjab allows ‘secret’ terrorism trials: Why it’s controversial

A single unnamed official can order anonymous judges, prosecutors and witnesses in terrorism cases, with no time limit.

The Provincial Assembly of the Punjab building in Lahore, where the province's Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2026 was passed on August 31, 2026 [Rahat Dar/EPA]

Islamabad, Pakistan — Politicians in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, have passed a law allowing terrorism trials to be held in near-total secrecy, with the judge, prosecutor and witnesses permitted to remain anonymous.

Under the law, a person facing the country’s most serious criminal charge could be convicted without learning who heard the case against them, who prosecuted it or who testified.

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The trial record can be sealed, and an appeal could be heard by judges never told who presided over the original trial.

The Anti-Terrorism (Punjab Amendment) Bill 2026 passed the Punjab Assembly on August 31, after opposition politicians staged a walkout in protest.

Four days earlier, the government had appeared to relent, agreeing to have the bill reviewed by the law department or a parliamentary committee.

When it returned to the floor, it was unchanged and passed without amendment on Monday.

The law has drawn criticism from opposition politicians, lawyers, rights groups and analysts, who say it concentrates enormous power in a single, unnamed official and could be used against government critics.

What does the new law do?

The law lets the government appoint a senior bureaucrat as a “designated authority” tasked with deciding what cases are to be heard under the special provisions earmarked in the legislation.

The official’s identity is kept confidential, known only to the chief justice of the Lahore High Court.

The official can declare any terrorism case, or even a whole category of them, a “special security case” if they conclude that the people involved need special “protection”.

The law does not clearly define the parameters that need to be met, and the accused cannot contest being placed under this category. Once the official requests it, the chief justice assigns the case to a sitting anti-terrorism court judge. A panel of five public prosecutors is drawn up, and the official picks one.

From there, the identities of the judge, prosecutor, police officers, witnesses and defence lawyers cannot be disclosed under any circumstances. Official titles are used instead of names, and court orders are signed without revealing who signed them.

Witnesses are identified only by codes. Hearings can be held over videolink, including from inside a prison, with voice-altering technology used to disguise participants.

The case file is sealed and held jointly by the chief justice and the official.

The law includes no expiry date, and a final clause allows the government to adopt “such other measures as it may deem appropriate”, leaving room to add further powers without further legislation.

Why is the government doing this, and why now?

The government’s official justification, laid out in the bill itself, points to increased cases of attacks by armed groups, and rising threats faced by judges, prosecutors, investigators and witnesses. It argues that the existing law does not adequately protect them.

Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan, on the floor of the assembly, invoked Pakistan’s toll from terrorism over the past two decades to argue that the assembly was the right forum to strengthen prosecutions.

Khalid Mahmood Ranjha, the legislator who tabled the bill, told Al Jazeera that the chief justice, not the designated authority, nominates the trial judge.

“There is no interference of the executive,” he said.

He dismissed fears that the law could be used against political opponents.

“It is just an apprehension,” the politician said, calling the criticism “propaganda to politicise and make the law controversial”.

“This law [is] only for hardened terrorists.”

But no single attack or case has been publicly named as the trigger.

Punjab also records only a small share of Pakistan’s terrorism-related deaths each year.

The vast majority occur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, which together account for more than 90 percent of the country’s terrorism deaths.

Al Jazeera contacted Azma Bokhari, Punjab’s provincial minister for information, Marriyum Aurangzeb, senior minister in the Punjab government, and Rana Muhammad Iqbal, Punjab’s law minister, but did not receive a response.

What are critics saying?

Rida Hosain, a Lahore-based constitutional lawyer, said the threats facing judges, prosecutors and witnesses in Pakistan are real.

“There is no denying that Pakistan’s people and land have paid a devastating price for terrorism,” she told Al Jazeera. But she said no one who has actually read the amendment “can reasonably claim that it is consistent with due process”.

Opposition politicians argued the law violates the constitutional right to a fair trial and hands judicial-style powers to an unelected official with no oversight.

Ahmer Rasheed Bhatti, the independent legislator affiliated with jailed opposition leader Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party, led objections on the floor.

“It creates a parallel procedure in which the executive, not the court, decides what a fair trial will look like,” he told Al Jazeera.

The designated authority must consult the chief justice, he said, but does not need their agreement.

Hosain said the secrecy itself removes a basic safeguard.

“By introducing faceless courts, an accused is deprived of the ability to challenge judicial bias and safeguard judicial impartiality,” she told Al Jazeera. “While this law remains in force, the right to a fair trial and due process is effectively suspended in Punjab.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) also raised the alarm.

“The bill does not adequately define the circumstances in which these extraordinary powers may be invoked,” the commission’s spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

That, HRCP said, creates scope for abuse against ordinary citizens, political opponents or protesters in the name of security.

Mian Dawood, a Lahore-based constitutional lawyer, said existing law already lets courts protect witnesses and hold closed hearings under a judge’s control.

The new law, he said, moves that control to the executive rather than filling a gap. He said someone wrongly caught up in the system would have little recourse. Remedies such as a malicious-prosecution claim exist on paper but are “impracticable” in Pakistan’s courts, he said.

“A citizen has to suffer the misuse of powers by the state authorities,” the constitutional expert said.

Majid Nizami, a Lahore-based analyst, told Al Jazeera that Punjab province’s original antiterrorism law — enacted in 1997 and now amended with the controversial new provisions — was also misused.

“It looked very good on paper too,” Nizami said. “But what happened, eventually, was that it was used for political point-scoring and political manoeuvring.”

He said the law has, since 1997, been applied against nearly every major political party in Pakistan.

Nizami said he could not identify a Punjab case in the past decade where witness intimidation had derailed a prosecution — the ostensible justification for shielding the privacy of prosecutors and judges under the new amendments.

But there are older precedents. One case that stands out involved rebel commander Malik Ishaq. Ishaq co-founded Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian group blamed for killing hundreds of people, most of them Shia Muslims.

Named in more than 200 criminal cases, he repeatedly walked free after witnesses and even judges grew too frightened to move against him, until he was killed in a 2015 shootout after armed men freed him from police custody.

Has Pakistan tried this before?

Punjab itself passed a law last year giving authorities the power to detain terrorism suspects for up to three months without charge, part of a wider wave in which Balochistan and the federal government passed near-identical detention powers in 2025.

Balochistan passed a similar law in September 2025, letting a senior official anonymously flag cases for the same kind of concealed proceedings. It has been in force for about a year, without any publicly known case of its use.

Ranjha told Al Jazeera that Balochistan and Sindh had “already passed this law,” and that Punjab needed to follow.

While Sindh has amended its own antiterrorism law, it is only to let the provincial government resize or abolish antiterrorism courts based on caseload. It introduces no comparable anonymity or secrecy provisions. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has not amended its law along either track.

Salman Ghani, a political analyst, said Punjab’s situation differs from Balochistan’s for a simpler reason. “Punjab is still governable, and we don’t see terrorism incidents here every other day,” he told Al Jazeera.

Bhatti argued that gap was telling.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which, alongside Balochistan, faces the overwhelming majority of the country’s terrorism violence, has not adopted secret trials; Punjab, which faces almost none of it, has.

“The federal government looks instrumental,” Bhatti told Al Jazeera. “Provinces appear to have been asked to enact similar amendments.”

He does not believe Punjab’s government developed that appetite on its own. “You are not looking at a local caseload,” he said. “You are looking at a request.”

A legal challenge looks likely.

Opposition politicians have argued that the law conflicts with the constitution’s fair-trial guarantees and oversteps what a provincial assembly can legislate, since antiterrorism law falls under federal jurisdiction.

With no sunset clause built in, the law does not expire on its own; whether it survives will most likely be decided in court rather than by the assembly that passed it.

Bhatti drew a comparison with the last time Pakistan departed this far from ordinary courts: military trials for civilians, introduced only through a constitutional amendment after the 2014 Peshawar Army Public School massacre, and built with a two-year limit unless parliament renewed it.

“You do not need a faceless provincial trial in the safer province,” he told Al Jazeera, “Unless the facelessness is the point.”

一名未具名的官员可以命令在恐怖主义案件中任命匿名法官、检察官和证人，且没有时间限制。

2026 年 8 月 31 日，旁遮普省议会在拉合尔的议会大楼通过了该省的《2026 年反恐（修正）法案》。[Rahat Dar/EPA]

巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡——巴基斯坦人口最多的旁遮普省的政客们通过了一项法律，允许恐怖主义审判在近乎完全秘密的情况下进行，法官、检察官和证人都可以保持匿名。

根据法律，面临该国最严重刑事指控的人可能会在不知道谁审理了针对他的案件、谁提起了诉讼或谁作证的情况下被定罪。

列表 1/4：巴基斯坦备受争议的宪法修正案涉及哪些内容？

巴基斯坦通过修正案，授权议会选举最高法院大法官（共4项，此为第2项）

问题 3（共 4 个）：巴基斯坦第 27 号宪法修正案将如何重塑其军队和法院？

巴基斯坦旁遮普邦警察在八个月内杀害了 900 人：到底发生了什么？（列表 4/4）

审判记录可以被封存，上诉可以由永远不会知道原审法官是谁的法官来审理。

2026 年反恐（旁遮普修正案）法案于 8 月 31 日在旁遮普邦议会获得通过，此前反对派政客举行了退场抗议活动。

四天前，政府似乎做出了让步，同意由法律部门或议会委员会审查该法案。

该法案再次提交审议时，内容未作任何修改，并于周一获得通过。

该法律遭到反对派政治家、律师、人权组织和分析人士的批评，他们表示该法律将巨大的权力集中在一名未具名的官员手中，并可能被用来打压政府批评者。

新法律规定了什么？

该法律允许政府任命一名高级官员作为“指定机构”，负责决定哪些案件应根据该立法中规定的特别条款进行审理。

该官员的身份保密，只有拉合尔高等法院首席大法官知道。

如果官员认为相关人员需要特殊“保护”，则可以宣布任何恐怖主义案件，甚至整个类别的恐怖主义案件为“特殊安全案件”。

法律并未明确界定需要满足的具体条件，被告也无法对被归入此类提出异议。一旦官员提出申请，首席大法官便会将案件指派给一名在任的反恐法庭法官。随后会组建一个由五名检察官组成的小组，由该官员从中挑选一名。

从那里开始，法官、检察官、警官、证人和辩护律师的身份在任何情况下都不能泄露。他们使用官方头衔代替姓名，法院命令的签署人也不会透露其身份。

证人仅以代码标识。听证会可通过视频连线举行，包括在监狱内进行，并使用变声技术来掩盖参与者的身份。

案件卷宗已被封存，由首席大法官和相关官员共同保管。

该法律没有规定失效日期，最后一条条款允许政府采取“其认为适当的其他措施”，从而为在不另行立法的情况下增加更多权力留下了空间。

政府为什么要这样做？为什么是现在？

政府在法案本身中给出的官方理由指出，武装团体袭击事件增多，法官、检察官、调查人员和证人面临的威胁日益加剧。政府认为，现行法律不足以保护他们。

议长马利克·穆罕默德·艾哈迈德·汗在议会发言时，援引巴基斯坦过去二十年来遭受恐怖主义袭击的惨重损失，论证议会是加强起诉的合适场所。

提出该法案的立法者哈立德·马哈茂德·兰贾告诉半岛电视台，首席大法官而不是指定机构提名审判法官。

他说：“行政部门没有干预。”

他驳斥了有关该法律可能被用来对付政治对手的担忧。

这位政治家表示：“这只是一种担忧”，并称这些批评是“将法律政治化和制造争议的宣传”。

“这项法律只适用于顽固的恐怖分子。”

但目前尚未公开指出任何单一的袭击或案件是引发此次事件的原因。

旁遮普邦每年记录的与恐怖主义有关的死亡人数仅占巴基斯坦总数的一小部分。

绝大多数恐怖袭击事件发生在开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省和俾路支省，这两个省的恐怖袭击死亡人数占全国恐怖袭击死亡人数的 90% 以上。

半岛电视台联系了旁遮普省新闻部长阿兹玛·布哈里、旁遮普省政府高级部长玛丽亚姆·奥朗则布和旁遮普省法律部长拉纳·穆罕默德·伊克巴尔，但没有收到回复。

评论家们怎么说？

拉合尔的宪法律师里达·侯赛因表示，巴基斯坦的法官、检察官和证人面临的威胁是真实存在的。

她告诉半岛电视台：“不可否认，巴基斯坦人民和土地为恐怖主义付出了惨痛的代价。”但她表示，任何真正读过该修正案的人“都无法合理地声称它符合正当程序”。

反对派政治家认为，该法律违反了宪法赋予的公平审判权，并将司法权力赋予了未经选举且不受监督的官员。

与被监禁的反对派领导人伊姆兰·汗的巴基斯坦正义运动党 (PTI) 有关联的独立议员艾哈迈尔·拉希德·巴蒂在议会中带头提出反对意见。

“这造成了一种平行程序，在这个程序中，行政部门而不是法院来决定什么是公平审判，”他告诉半岛电视台。

他说，指定机构必须咨询首席大法官，但不需要获得首席大法官的同意。

侯赛因表示，保密本身就取消了一项基本的保障措施。

她告诉半岛电视台：“通过引入无面子法庭，被告被剥夺了挑战司法偏见和维护司法公正的能力。只要这项法律仍然有效，旁遮普邦的公平审判权和正当程序权实际上就被中止了。”

巴基斯坦人权委员会（HRCP）也发出了警报。

“该法案没有充分界定在何种情况下可以援引这些特殊权力，”委员会发言人告诉半岛电视台。

人权委员会表示，这为以安全为名滥用权力侵害普通公民、政治对手或抗议者提供了空间。

拉合尔的宪法律师米安·达乌德表示，现行法律已经允许法院在法官的控制下保护证人并举行非公开听证会。

他表示，新法并非填补法律漏洞，而是将控制权移交给了行政部门。他还说，如果有人不幸卷入司法系统，几乎没有申诉途径。他指出，虽然恶意起诉等补救措施在纸面上存在，但在巴基斯坦的法院“根本行不通”。

“公民必须承受国家机关滥用权力的后果，”这位宪法专家说。

拉合尔分析师马吉德·尼扎米告诉半岛电视台，旁遮普省最初的反恐法（于 1997 年颁布，现在经过修订，加入了有争议的新条款）也被滥用。

“从纸面上看，这的确很不错，”尼扎米说。“但最终，它却被用来进行政治作秀和政治操纵。”

他说，自 1997 年以来，该法律几乎已被应用于巴基斯坦所有主要政党。

尼扎米表示，他无法指出过去十年旁遮普邦有任何一起因恐吓证人而导致起诉失败的案件——这是新修正案保护检察官和法官隐私的表面理由。

但此前也有过类似的先例。其中一个突出的案例涉及叛军指挥官马利克·伊沙克。伊沙克是“拉什卡尔-詹格维”组织的联合创始人之一，该组织是一个宗派组织，被指控杀害了数百人，其中大多数是什叶派穆斯林。

他被卷入 200 多起刑事案件，由于证人甚至法官都害怕对他采取行动，他屡次逍遥法外，直到 2015 年，武装人员将他从警方拘留中释放后，他在一场枪战中被击毙。

巴基斯坦以前尝试过这种做法吗？

旁遮普邦去年通过了一项法律，赋予当局权力，无需指控即可拘留恐怖主义嫌疑人长达三个月。这是更广泛的浪潮的一部分，俾路支省和联邦政府在 2025 年通过了几乎相同的拘留权法案。

俾路支省于2025年9月通过了一项类似的法律，允许高级官员匿名举报存在类似隐瞒诉讼程序的案件。该法律已生效约一年，但尚未有任何公开案例表明其被使用。

兰贾告诉半岛电视台，俾路支省和信德省“已经通过了这项法律”，旁遮普省也需要效仿。

信德省虽然修订了其反恐法，但仅限于允许省政府根据案件数量调整或撤销反恐法庭的规模，并未引入任何类似的匿名或保密条款。开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省则未就此进行任何法律修订。

政治分析家萨尔曼·加尼表示，旁遮普邦的情况与俾路支省不同，原因很简单。“旁遮普邦目前仍处于可治理状态，我们在这里不会每天都看到恐怖袭击事件，”他告诉半岛电视台。

巴蒂认为这种差距很能说明问题。

开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省与俾路支省一起，面临着该国绝大多数的恐怖主义暴力，但该省没有采用秘密审判；而几乎没有面临恐怖主义暴力的旁遮普省却采用了秘密审判。

巴蒂告诉半岛电视台：“联邦政府似乎发挥了关键作用。各省似乎也被要求通过类似的修正案。”

他不认为旁遮普邦政府是主动产生了这种意愿。“你看到的不是本地病例数量，”他说，“而是政府提出的请求。”

看来很可能会提起法律诉讼。

反对派政客认为，该法律与宪法规定的公平审判保障相冲突，并且超越了省议会的立法权限，因为反恐法属于联邦管辖范围。

由于没有设置日落条款，该法律不会自行失效；它能否继续有效很可能由法院决定，而不是由通过该法律的议会决定。

巴蒂将这次事件与巴基斯坦上次如此大幅度地偏离普通法庭的情况进行了比较：对平民进行军事审判，这是在 2014 年白沙瓦陆军公立学校大屠杀后通过宪法修正案引入的，并且规定了两年期限，除非议会予以延期。

“你不需要在一个更安全的省份进行一场没有面孔的省级审判，”他告诉半岛电视台，“除非匿名性正是目的所在。”