Islamabad: President Mamnoon Hussain on Friday signed the Protection of Pakistan Bill 2014 into law, empowering the country’s law-enforcement agencies to effectively counter terrorist activity across the country.
The Senate and National Assembly have already passed the bill unanimously.
The bill provides for protection against waging of war or insurrection against Pakistan and prevention of acts threatening the security of the country.
The law provides unusual powers to the army and law-enforcing institutions for operations against those involved in terrorism, extortion and other crimes.
After the President’s signature, the bill has now become the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance. The law is effective immediately.
Moreover, it permits security forces to shoot suspects on sight with the permission of a grade-15 official. According to the law, the order to shoot a person on suspicion will come only from an official of a law-enforcement agency or a police officer of grade-15 or above.
Based on two presidential ordinances decreed in October 2013 and in January, the legislation was recently approved in the Parliament and only awaited the president’s signature for it to come into effect.
On July 2, the National Assembly passed the legislation with a majority vote in a special one-day session of the 342-seat lower house.
The legislation was able to make it through the houses of Parliament following the accommodation of many opposition amendments to what had become the most controversial legislation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s one-year-old administration on the grounds that it violated fundamental rights.
