Pakistan Assembly to legalise trials before military courts

Islamabad: Pakistan's Parliament is to adopt a bill legalising trials before military courts for another two years.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government is expected to fast-track the draft before lawmakers later on Friday amid indications that the National Assembly would unanimously back the constitutional amendment.

The amendment authorises the army to try any suspect on terrorism-related charges. A similar amendment adopted in 2015 allowed military courts to carry out trials of militant suspects under a two-year mandate. That initial mandate expired in January.

The 2015 measure came after a December 2014 Taliban attack at a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed 154 people, mostly schoolchildren. The army says that during the previous two-year mandate, 274 cases were referred to military courts, which sentenced 161 people to death.