Reporting snapshot · 29 October 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The verdict was pronounced at Adiala jail on Thursday afternoon, and the couple's lawyer had asked the court to postpone it because their petitions were still before the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court. The main limitation is that the written order was not published, so the terms of the sentence are as described in the reporting from court.
What the court decided on 29 October
An anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi sentenced the human rights lawyers Imaan Mazari and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, to 10 years in prison each on Thursday, 29 October 2026, in the case over the security arrangements for an international cricket team’s visit to Pakistan in October 2024. Geo News reported that the court handed down sentences under three separate legal provisions and imposed fines on both defendants, and The Express Tribune reported that the verdict was pronounced at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi by anti-terrorism court judge Tahir Abbas Sipra.
The terms of the order, as Geo News set them out, split the sentence into parts: two years’ imprisonment and a Rs50,000 fine under Section 353, one year and a further Rs50,000 fine under Section 186, and 10 years each under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 with fines of Rs100,000. The court granted the couple the benefit of Section 382 and ruled that all the sentences would run concurrently, so they would serve 10 years in total.
Speaking to the defendants, the judge said they had faced various allegations and that the prosecution had presented seven witnesses during the trial, Geo News reported.
The case that produced the verdict
The trial was held in jail. Pakistan Today reported that the proceedings concluded at Adiala jail on Tuesday, 27 October, that both accused recorded their statements under Section 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and that the court reserved its verdict for 29 October after final arguments. The Express Tribune reported that prosecutor Raja Naveed Hussain Kayani concluded the prosecution’s submissions, and that the case had been shifted to Adiala jail amid disputes over the accused’s production in court and defence lawyers’ access to their clients. Geo News reported that a state counsel, Atif Mahmood, was appointed by the court to represent the couple and cross-examined the seven prosecution witnesses.
The charges were framed on 7 October, Pakistan Today reported, in a case relating to the alleged disruption of an international cricket team’s security route and incitement to public unrest, with the couple accused of removing barriers along that route. The Thursday Times reported the allegation more specifically: that they were accused of removing barriers on a route closed for the England cricket team’s convoy in October 2024, and that the indictment included terrorism-related provisions.
They have been in custody since their arrest on 23 January 2026, in a case registered over a protest outside the Islamabad High Court, Pakistan Today reported, a month after the high court had granted them protective bail in a separate case registered in 2025, as KhabarWire reported.
The accounts do not agree on where the case was registered. Geo News said it was registered at Islamabad’s Aabpara police station on 25 October 2024, while Pakistan Today reported that it was registered at Kohsar police station on 22 March 2025 on the complaint of Rawalpindi’s city magistrate, Ghulam Murtaza Chandio, and The Express Tribune said the case that followed the couple’s rearrest in September was registered at Kohsar police station.
Why the defence argued the court could not decide
Defence counsel Aimal Khan Mandokhail submitted a written application asking the court to defer the verdict until the couple’s petitions before the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court were decided. The Express Tribune reported his argument: “Until our petitions are heard, the court cannot legally announce its verdict.” He also told the court that an application seeking the transfer of the case was pending before the high court. The court adjourned until 1pm, when it announced that it would pronounce the verdict, and did so the same afternoon.
Two sets of proceedings are pending. On Monday, 26 October, the couple approached the Supreme Court challenging the Islamabad High Court’s order of 19 October refusing to stay the trial, Pakistan Today reported. In that petition they argued that unless the trial was suspended their pending high court application would become ineffective, that the trial court had begun proceedings in haste without giving them adequate time, and that it had recorded the statements of the prosecution witnesses in a single day, The Express Tribune reported. They also contend that removing barriers did not amount to terrorism and that the trial was intended to harass them and subject them to political victimisation, the Express Tribune reported.
At the high court, the couple are appealing an anti-terrorism court order of 10 October that dismissed their petitions challenging the framing of charges and the inclusion of terrorism-related provisions. The court has issued notices and said it will decide the next course of action after receiving the parties’ responses, Pakistan Today reported.
Why it matters
This is the couple’s second conviction this year, The Thursday Times noted, and the first of the two that has not been stayed. A sessions court had sentenced them to a cumulative 17 years in January 2026 under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act for social media posts; the Supreme Court suspended those sentences on 17 September and ordered their release pending the high court’s decision, and Islamabad police arrested them again hours later in the security breach case, Geo News and Pakistan Today reported. That release is where the file has stalled. The anti-terrorism court conviction is now the operative sentence, and the couple’s route out of prison runs through the Supreme Court and the high court.
The case also extends the use of terrorism provisions to conduct that the couple’s lawyers describe as road-barrier removal during a cricket tour, and the arguments they have put to the Supreme Court concern the fairness of the trial as much as the events of the day itself. KhabarWire separately reported how an Islamabad anti-terrorism court used double life terms in the May 9 digital terrorism cases. KhabarWire tracks the wider institutional file in its Parliament and Courts hub.
What is still uncertain
The written order has not been published, and no account describes how the judge answered the objection that the court could not legally decide while the couple’s petitions were pending. Nothing in the reporting says whether the couple have been moved to prison or whether they have filed a fresh application after the verdict.
The accounts also differ on the case itself, and the differences have not been reconciled. Geo News called it a security breach case registered at Aabpara police station on 25 October 2024; The Express Tribune called it the barrier removal case and located the September rearrest at Kohsar police station; Pakistan Today located the case at Kohsar police station, registered on 22 March 2025 on a city magistrate’s complaint.
On the record of the trial, The Thursday Times reported that the couple were tried inside jail and that, in statements recorded on 27 October, they called the case “nothing more than harassment” for their legal and human rights work. It also reported that Imaan Mazari’s mother, Shireen Mazari, has said the couple never left Adiala jail. No official account of their current custody position was published.
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