For years, Pakistan’s debate over enforced disappearances has been trapped between two deeply serious concerns. Families have demanded answers about relatives whose whereabouts were unknown, while the state has struggled with terrorist organisations operating through clandestine networks, intimidation and violence. Treating either side of this debate casually has produced more controversy than solutions. What Pakistan has needed is a system in which security agencies can investigate genuinely dangerous suspects without allowing detention to disappear into a legal grey zone.
Recent changes to the anti-terrorism framework appear intended to move in that direction. The underlying problem is not difficult to understand. Pakistan’s conventional criminal justice system was designed primarily for ordinary crime. Terrorism presents a different evidentiary and security environment. Investigators may be dealing with covert networks, encrypted communications, cross-border linkages and frightened witnesses. NACTA itself has acknowledged longstanding weaknesses in criminal investigations, prosecution, forensic capacity and witness protection.
This weakness has had consequences. Terrorism cases have historically produced significant numbers of acquittals, often because investigators could not produce sufficiently strong evidence or witnesses were unwilling to testify. In Sindh, for example, anti-terrorism courts recorded a conviction rate of about 17 percent in 2019, with witness insecurity identified as one of the problems affecting trials. Research on terrorism prosecutions in Pakistan has similarly pointed towards weak investigations, security concerns and intimidation of witnesses as important factors behind unsuccessful cases.
That background matters when examining the introduction of preventive detention for inquiry. Section 11-EEEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act provides for preventive detention for a period not exceeding three months in specified terrorism-related circumstances, with inquiry conducted by senior police officers or a Joint Interrogation Team. Importantly, the law also requires the detainee to be produced before the relevant judicial officer within 24 hours.
Balochistan incorporated this approach through its Anti-Terrorism amendment legislation. The significance is not simply that investigators receive additional time. The larger change is that detention is brought into a statutory process. According to reporting on the implementation of the system in Balochistan, detention is notified and information is shared with the family, physician and court. Around 90 suspects had reportedly been detained under the new framework by September 2026. Five had been released after allegations could not be established, while 40 had been referred for trial.
These figures matter because they illustrate what a functioning legal mechanism should do. Preventive detention should never mean automatic guilt. Investigation may establish a prosecutable case, or it may establish that the evidence is insufficient. A credible system must be capable of producing both outcomes.
The second part of the challenge begins once a case reaches court. A terrorist organisation does not need to defeat the prosecution legally if it can terrorise the people responsible for conducting it. Judges, prosecutors, investigators and witnesses can become targets themselves.
Pakistan has experienced precisely that danger. Former Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Muhammad Noor Meskanzai was assassinated in Kharan in October 2022. In July 2026, District and Sessions Judge Abdul Hakeem Kakar and his guard were killed while travelling towards Mastung, while Additional Sessions Judge Tariq Lashari was injured. Reporting from Balochistan has also described the kidnapping of an additional sessions judge handling terrorism-related cases and the deaths of dozens of Counter Terrorism Department personnel.
It is in this environment that the concept of faceless courts has emerged. These mechanisms seek to conceal the identities of judges, prosecutors or witnesses in particularly sensitive terrorism proceedings and can employ secure documentation, video links, screens and voice modification. Punjab’s 2026 anti-terrorism amendment similarly introduced Section 21-AAA for special-security cases, providing extraordinary protection for participants in proceedings.
The principle behind such protection is not unique to Pakistan. Different versions of witness anonymity, protected testimony and secure judicial arrangements exist in jurisdictions including Britain and several European countries. Pakistan’s existing Section 21AA also permits measures including in-camera proceedings, witness anonymity, pseudonyms, screening, video links and voice modulation.
Yet extraordinary security measures require equally serious safeguards. Critics of the Punjab amendments have raised legitimate questions about transparency, the role of executive authorities and the accused person’s constitutional right to a fair trial. Those objections should not simply be dismissed. Article 10A of Pakistan’s Constitution protects fair trial and due process, and counterterrorism legislation becomes stronger, not weaker, when its safeguards can withstand judicial scrutiny.
The objective, therefore, should not be secrecy for its own sake. It should be security without legal invisibility. Every detention should be recorded. Families should be informed. Judicial supervision should begin immediately. Investigations should operate within fixed timelines. Those against whom evidence cannot be established should be released, while cases supported by evidence should proceed to trial. At the same time, judges, prosecutors and witnesses should receive enough protection to perform their duties without fear of assassination or kidnapping.
This is where the recent reforms could become important in Pakistan’s missing-persons debate. The answer to allegations of enforced disappearance is not to deny that concerns exist. It is to make unaccounted detention structurally unnecessary. If an individual is suspected of terrorism, there should be a legal record of apprehension, judicial oversight, an investigation period and a clear endpoint consisting either of release or prosecution.
Pakistan is confronting organisations capable of using violence not only against citizens and security personnel but against the machinery of justice itself. A modern counterterrorism system has to recognise that reality. But its strength will ultimately be measured by something more demanding than the number of suspects detained. It will be measured by whether Pakistan can investigate terrorism effectively while ensuring that every exercise of state power remains identifiable, reviewable and answerable to law.
That is the real significance of the reforms. They offer an opportunity to replace an opaque security dilemma with a traceable judicial process. Properly implemented, that would serve both national security and the credibility of the state.
