Schizophrenia not a mental illness, Pakistan’s Supreme Court rules
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 being a paranoid schizophrenic, after he was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of a cleric.
His lawyers say Ali is unfit to be executed as he is 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 is “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.
It is outrageous ... and [it] flies in the face of accepted medical knowledge, including Pakistan’s own mental health laws
The verdict relied on two dictionary definitions of the term ’schizophrenia’, as well as a 1988 judgment by the Supreme Court in neighbouring India.