ISLAMABAD, October 31: Top British legal expert Lord Alex Carlile on Wednesday observed that serving judges must not have role in judicial appointments.

He was speaking at a public forum on “anti-terrorism laws in Pakistan: the quest to balance civil liberties and addressing terrorism”. The forum was organised by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) here.

The British legal expert said there were many pillars of independence of judiciary in the United Kingdom, and one of them was a credible mechanism for judicial appointments, independent of the executive as well as the judiciary.

He said the judicial appointments commission in UK did not comprise serving judges rather it was composed of prominent lawyers and businessmen and other important segments of the society. It has its own mechanism of judicial appointments including written tests, interviews, etc.

Carlile, who is a former independent reviewer of UK counterterrorism legislation and key speaker at the forum, noted that the independence of judiciary was compromised when the appointments were dependent on serving judges.

Sharing his experience of strengthening legislation to tackle counterterrorism, Carlile stressed that there had to be a narrative that dealt with the counterterrorism strategy.

He agreed that Pakistan was the frontline state against terrorism. An effective way out of tackling terrorism would be “shared solutions toward shared problems.” He said maintaining an effective balance between civil liberties and counterterrorism was an art.

Probing as to why Pakistan has a low conviction rate and the UK, a high rate, Lord Carlile said that the judiciary is the key to this effect. He said that not only do they have to be safe and secure, but they also need to be properly paid. Moreover, the judges need to have certain expertise, disagreeing with the notion that all judges can deal with anti-terrorism cases.

In the UK, he said, there is a judicial appointment commission which enforces that all judges, starting off at the district level, have to pass a written examination and undergo an interview.

The competence of a judge includes absorbing diversity and comfort in dealing with others, leading to a considerable improvement in quality of judges.

Lord Carlile stressed that there was absolutely no use of the best judge if the case is badly prepared. To this end, he shared the process through which the evidence makes the way from crime scene to forensic laboratory before being presented in the court.

Former Punjab Governor Shahid Hamid, who chaired the session, recommended that the number of days for detention need to be looked into, and those institutions that train suicide bombers need to be investigated. Likewise, the law needs to deal with the violence caused by explosives, which were not much an issue in 1997.

Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, executive director, Pildat, said there were no two opinions that Pakistan was faced with a gigantic challenge of continued and increased acts of terrorism in almost all parts of the country. He said that whereas the current 13th National Assembly and the Senate had a healthy record of legislation at least in a relative sense, the two areas where the parliament had not been able to successfully legislate were accountability and counterterrorism.