ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Senate on Tuesday approved amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) empowering security agencies to detain suspects of terrorism and other serious crimes for up to three months, a move the government says will help fight militancy and address the country’s longstanding issue of enforced disappearances.
The Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2025, passed by the National Assembly last week, will now go to the president for assent before becoming law.
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar defended the measure while speaking in parliament, saying it created a lawful framework for preventive detention that would strengthen counterterrorism operations.
“This will be a lawful process and there will be no enforced disappearances anymore,” Tarar told lawmakers, adding that the legislation was aimed at combating militancy and contained safeguards to prevent misuse.
Enforced disappearances have long been a contentious issue in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan, the site of a decades-old separatist insurgency and where families and rights groups accuse state institutions of arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings. Authorities deny the allegations but the practice has remained a source of domestic and international criticism.
