‘Man with schizophrenia can be executed’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top court has ruled that schizophrenia does not fall within its legal definition of mental disorders, clearing the way for the execution, as soon as next week, of a mentally ill man convicted of murder.

Government doctors in 2012 certified Imdad Ali, 50, as a paranoid schizophrenic, after he was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of a cleric.

Ali’s lawyers said he was unfit to be executed as he was unable to understand his crime and punishment, and that doing so would violate Pakistan’s obligations under a United Nations treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

However, a three-judge bench of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Anwer Zaheer Jamali, ruled that schizophrenia was “not a permanent mental disorder”.

“It is, therefore, a recoverable disease, which, in all the cases, does not fall within the definition of ‘mental disorder’,” the judges said in Thursday’s verdict.

The verdict relied on two dictionary definitions of the term schizophrenia, as well as a 1988 judgment by the Supreme Court in neighbouring India.

The American Psychological Association defines schizophrenia as: “a serious mental illness characterised by incoherent or illogical thoughts, bizarre behaviour and speech, and delusions or hallucinations, such as hearing voices”

Dr Tahir Feroze, a government psychiatrist who treated Ali during the last eight years of his incarceration, said he and two other doctors had certified Ali’s condition in 2012.

Ali suffers from delusions that he controls the world, is persecuted and he hears voices in his head that command him, according to Feroze and Safia Bano, Ali’s wife. “He is completely delusional,” Bano said.

Ali’s lawyer, Sarah Belal, said the government report certifying Ali’s condition had never been presented in court before 2016.

In its judgment, the court dismissed the medical records and an affidavit from Feroze. The verdict is “outrageous”, said Britain-based rights group Reprieve.

“It is outrageous for Pakistan’s Supreme Court to claim that schizophrenia is not a mental illness, and flies in the face of accepted medical knowledge, including Pakistan’s own mental health laws,” said Maya Foa, Reprieve’s director.

Ali could be executed as early as Wednesday. Reuters