An anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi sentenced human rights lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and her husband Hadi Ali Chattha to 10 years in prison each on Thursday, October 29, 2026, in a security breach case linked to an international cricket team’s visit to Pakistan in October 2024. The verdict was announced at Adiala Jail. The headline figure is 10 years, but the order behind it is more complicated, and the fight is not over: the family says it will petition the Supreme Court, while petitions the defence wanted decided first were still pending when the verdict was delivered.
The sentence, in numbers
The order, as reported by Geo News, is made up of three parts. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, each defendant received 10 years in prison and a fine of Rs100,000. Under Section 353, each received two years and a fine of Rs50,000. Under Section 186, each received one year and a further fine of Rs50,000. Added together on paper, that is 13 years and Rs200,000 in fines per person. The court directed that all the sentences run concurrently, which is why the time actually to be served is 10 years each, not 13. The fines add up to Rs200,000 each. Geo News also reported seven prosecution witnesses, and that the court gave the couple credit for time already spent in custody.
How the case reached Adiala Jail
The case was registered at Islamabad’s Aabpara Police Station. Prosecutors alleged that during the international team’s visit in October 2024, the couple staged a protest, blocked a road and removed barriers from a designated security route, endangering the team’s security plans. The couple were indicted on October 7, 2026, and pleaded not guilty. Final arguments were completed on October 27, and the verdict followed two days later. In recorded statements reported by Dawn, the couple denied the charges and said they were prisoners of conscience targeted for their human rights work.
Their mother, Shireen Mazari, a former human rights minister, told Reuters that the couple were not permitted to defend themselves through their own lawyer and were not provided with key legal documents. The public prosecutor did not immediately respond to Reuters. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar has repeatedly said that the judiciary is independent.
The two tracks that remain open
Two separate legal tracks now sit alongside the verdict. The first already existed before it. Defence counsel Aimal Mandokhail asked the court to defer its ruling until petitions pending before the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court were decided, arguing it could not legally deliver its verdict while those applications were pending. The verdict was delivered anyway, so those petitions remain a live question.
The second track is new. Shireen Mazari told Reuters after the verdict: “We will file a petition against the verdict in the Supreme Court.” That is a planned challenge to this verdict itself, distinct from the petitions already pending when it was announced. What it argues, and when it is filed, will decide whether the 10-year term survives in its present form.
The January case behind this case
This verdict cannot be understood without the separate case that put the couple in custody in the first place. They were arrested on January 23, 2026, in a social media case prosecutors called anti-state. A sessions court sentenced each of them to 17 years the next day under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. The Supreme Court suspended those sentences on September 17, but police re-arrested them the same day in the security breach case. Readers following Pakistan’s cybercrime enforcement drive, which saw 1,129 arrests in a single month, will recognise the same cybercrime framework in the January case.
What happens next
Three things are worth watching. First, whether the family’s planned Supreme Court petition is filed, and on what grounds: the complaint about legal representation and documents, the argument about pending petitions, or both. Second, what happens to the petitions already pending before the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court. Third, how the custody credit affects the remaining time to be served, a detail reporting so far does not spell out.
Fifteen international civil society organisations, including the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation Against Torture, said last month that they were gravely concerned about the couple’s continued detention since January despite the Supreme Court suspending their earlier sentences. The law minister’s position is that the judiciary is independent. The verdict is the second major national story this week to turn on what happens after a formal decision, after the Makkah pact moved to its final parliamentary vote, and it joins a judiciary in transition, with Justice Munib Akhtar sworn in as acting chief justice. For more coverage in this area, see national news from Pakistan.
