What the court ordered
An Islamabad anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Friday, 2 January 2026 sentenced seven people — YouTuber Adil Raja, journalists Wajahat Saeed Khan, Sabir Shakir and Shaheen Sehbai, anchorperson Haider Raza Mehdi, analyst Moeed Pirzada and former army officer Akbar Hussain — to two concurrent terms of rigorous life imprisonment plus Rs500,000 in fines for each count, according to court orders reviewed by Dawn. ATC Judge Tahir Abbas Sipra announced the reserved verdicts after trials conducted in absentia at the prosecution’s request.
Each convict also received 10 years of rigorous imprisonment under Section 121-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (conspiracy to commit offences under Section 121, waging war against Pakistan), another 10-year term under Section 131 (abetting mutiny), and three concurrent five-year terms under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997. All sentences were ordered to run concurrently. A detailed written judgement explaining the evidentiary basis had not been issued at the time of reporting.
Where the cases came from
The charges stem from allegations that the seven used digital platforms to incite, facilitate and amplify attacks against state institutions during the May 9, 2023 unrest that followed the arrest of then-prime minister Imran Khan. Cases against Raja, Khan, Sehbai and Mehdi were registered at Islamabad’s Ramna police station; cases against Shakir, Hussain and Pirzada were registered at the Aabpara police station. The prosecution produced 24 witnesses. Public prosecutor Raja Naveed Hussain Kayani represented the state; Advocate Gulfam Ashraf Goraiya was appointed by the court to defend the accused.
What remains open
Each order informs the convict of a seven-day right of appeal to the Islamabad High Court. Trials conducted in absentia and the use of anti-terrorism statutes against journalists and commentators are likely to be tested in those appeals and in any subsequent litigation. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders raised concerns about the original 2023 case registrations; those concerns, and the eventual verdicts, leave the press-freedom and fair-trial questions unresolved on the date of this report.
Sources & reporting notes
This article draws on a single contemporaneous report — Dawn's 2 January 2026 coverage of the ATC verdicts — because direct Reuters and AP wire URLs for the same date returned 403 from the extraction backend at the time of writing, and no independent Pakistan or international outlet's same-day article on the verdicts could be located within the source-finding budget. The Dawn report quotes the court orders directly and is treated as an authoritative single-source account; this single-source limitation is disclosed in lieu of a second independent domain.
- Dawn — Islamabad ATC hands double life sentences to YouTuber Adil Raja, 6 others for 'waging war against Pakistan'Published 2 January 2026 by the Dawn news desk. Reports the verdicts, sentence structure, and court orders; identifies Judge Tahir Abbas Sipra, public prosecutor Raja Naveed Hussain Kayani and court-appointed defence counsel Gulfam Ashraf Goraiya.
