procedures and no other forensic evidence proving Amjad’s possession of the money and personal effects was presented. The sole witnesses to identify Amjad as part of the kidnapping gang were the complainants and reliance was almost entirely placed upon their identification of Amjad in an identification parade. According to Amjad, the complainants were his acquaintances and had personal enmity against him due to a dispute on a piece of land which Amjad had purchased from the complainant and he refused to hand over the possession. The Lahore High Court rejected his appeal and confirmed his death sentence on 2 June, 2009. The Supreme Court of Pakistan finally accepted his leave to appeal on 25 October, 2016 and his death penalty was converted to life imprisonment after spending over 9 years on death row. Under Section 21-H of the ATA, confessions made under the custody of police are admissible in court. This is contrary to the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 which renders any confessional statements made under police custody inadmissible as proof. Therefore, confessions and statements extracted by police through heinous torture and abuse often form the basis of convictions and death sentences under the ATA. In its Concluding Observations, the Human Rights Committee, termed Section 21-H as a violation of Pakistan’s international obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and issued recommendations to the Government to repeal it. Out of the 17 cases reviewed for this report almost all alleged experiencing some form of torture, whereas more than half claimed that they had been kept under illegal detention and tortured before being formally charged. (vi) LACK OF EFFECTIVE LEGAL REPRESENTATION International law provides all defendants with the right to effective legal counsel.61 The UN Human Rights Committee has stated that this right is particularly important in cases of death penalty.62 Accordingly in Pakistan, the High Court Rules provide access to a lawyer at state expense for cases where the punishment is death or imprisonment for life.63 However, these lawyers are often only engaged once the trial is underway. As a result, the accused remains unrepresented during all stages of arrest, police remand and investigation, where as described above, he is vulnerable to many forms of intimidation and abuse particularly due to the relaxed procedural safeguards under the ATA. This inevitably means that the accused is also without counsel to challenge the jurisdiction of the Anti-Terrorism Courts over his offence. Additionally, the lawyers appointed at state expense are selected off a list of volunteers, maintained by High Court Judges and appointed by the Advocate General’s office. These volunteers inevitably comprise of 61 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 14(3)(d) (“To be tried in his presence, and to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing; to be informed, if he does not have legal assistance, of this right; and to have legal assistance assigned to him, in any case where the interests of justice so require, and without payment by him in any such case if he does not have sufficient means to pay for it.”) 62 General Comment No. 32, para 38 63 Lahore High Court: Rules and Orders of the Lahore High Court, Lahore: Vol. V: Relating to Proceedings in the High Court (2005), Part E. Available at http://www.lhc.gov.pk/system/files/volume5.pdf TRIAL AND TERROR 20