Anti Terrorism Court (Urdu: عدالت انسداد دہشتگردی, ATC) was established in Pakistan, under Nawaz Sharif's government, to deal with terrorism cases.
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1997 creation and subsequent amendments
It has been created by the 1997 Anti-Terrorist Act, amended on 24 October 1998 by the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance following the Supreme Court judgement (Merham Ali versus Federation of Pakistan, 1998) declaring most of its provisions unconstitutional. A short time before being ousted out of power by Pervez Musharraf's coup, Sharif enacted the 25 August 1999 Pakistan Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance which generalized the ATC system to all of the country.
Anti-terrorism courts under General Pervez Musharraf
Following Pervez Musharraf's 1999 coup, Nawaz Sharif was judged and given a life sentence in 2000 by the ATC, which was commuted into exile.
ATC sentenced to death, in 2006, Kamran Atif, an alleged member of Harkat-ul Mujahideen al-Alami who had attempted to assassinate Musharraf in 2002, and had been arrested two years later. Following Musharraf's resignation in 2008, a moratorium on capital punishment has been enacted, although it is not completely respected.