Pakistan Court Sentences Mahrang Baloch, Sibghatullah Shah to Life in Prison
The two BYC leaders were convicted of murder and terrorism charges for their alleged role in inciting a crowd that killed a paramilitary soldier during a 2024 protest.
- On Monday, an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan sentenced Mahrang Baloch and Sibghatullah Shah, leaders of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee , to life in prison for the 2024 murder of a paramilitary soldier during a rally in Gwadar.
- Authorities allege the BYC serves as a front for the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army , a separatist group designated a terrorist organization in 2006, though the BYC rejects these claims and maintains it is a peaceful rights movement.
- Prosecutors cited "undeniable evidence" that Mahrang and Shah mobilized the mob that killed the soldier, prompting authorities to move proceedings from Gwadar to Quetta amid security concerns and witness intimidation.
- Baluchistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti hailed the verdict as a "demonstration of the rule of law and justice," while provincial spokesman Shahid Rind stated the case concerned murder, not political activism or dissent.
- The defendants retain the right to appeal the verdict amid ongoing violence in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran and remains a center of long-running separatist insurgency.
25 Articles
25 Articles
Pakistan: Authorities must immediately release Baloch activists handed life sentences following secret trial
Reacting to the life sentences given by Quetta’s Anti-Terrorism court to Baloch activists Mahrang Baloch and Sibghat Ullah Shah Jee on 22 June over their involvement in a 2024 protest during which a security officer was killed, Isabelle Lassee, Amnesty International’s Acting Regional Director for South Asia, said: “This verdict, which is an affront to the right to a fair trial, demonstrates how Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws are being cynically …
Condemned for the death of a soldier during a protest in Gwadar in 2024, the leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee announced that it will present a response. Human rights organisations denounce a process that is not transparent and fear new tensions in the province where the local ethnic minority contest Islamabad and foreign economic interests.
Pakistan’s ‘Faceless Trial’: Families besiege Quetta’s Huda jail over alleged secret trial of Dr Mahrang Baloch
Family members of detained Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leaders staged a sit-in outside Hudda Jail in Quetta demanding meetings with their relatives. They raised slogans in favour of jailed leaders and demanded an end to what they described as “faceless trials” against Dr Mahrang Baloch and other BYC leaders. The protest on June 20 and June 22 came as detained BYC leaders have continued their own sit-in inside the jail for past over a week. T…
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