LONDON: PTI supporters descended on the campus of University of Hull this week, where Judge Humayun Dilawar is undergoing a training.

The training program­­me appears to have been established about a decade ago by a University of Hull law Professor Niaz A. Shah.

As news of Mr Dilawar’s participation circulated, PTI supporters and activists sent a deluge of emails, tweets and Facebook posts to or tagging the university and demanding the judge’s expulsion from the course.

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They even went to the university campus and filmed a video outside the department, where Prof Shah was seen taking the phone away from one of the activists.

Shayan Ali, a young PTI activist, posted videos to X (formerly Twitter) showing him walking up to the department and claiming that his team was “attacked and threatened”.

He also falsely claimed that the judge had been removed from the course.

The entire fiasco got a response from the university. In a press statement, the university on Monday afternoon said, “The University of Hull has been running human rights and the rule of law training for Pakistani judges since 2014. Participants for the training are selected by their respective High Courts.

“The current cohort has been selected by the Islamabad High Court, the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The University has no role in the selection of judges.”

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2023