Two lawyers are being persecuted again and again, to stop them from representing victims of state abuse. To stop them from raising their voices for the most vulnerable. To stop them, most important, from presenting young Pakistanis with an alternative vision: that amid a sea of cushion-warmers, there is still something to be gained from the will to act. That if the young are brave enough, they can still remake the world they find.

Because seventeen years for tweeting was a travesty. Perhaps the word ‘travesty’ itself was invented for such a sentence. In a place where killers walk free in a day via coerced compromises, and where 14 years is thought good enough for even the most wretched on death row, two human rights fighters posed the most serious threat to society, and – as recent, sinister developments attest – continue to do so.

What were they in for, before their sentences were suspended? Expressing solidarity with the disappeared. That’s it. The state called it ‘cyber-terrorism’. The fact that UN experts have had to step in to say the obvious – that a lawyer’s freedom of expression cannot be conflated with criminal conduct, what to say of actual terrorism – tells you where we are. Incredibly, Hadi was sent to jail for hitting no more than the retweet button.

But if nothing is true, everything is permitted: in appeals before the Dogar Court in Islamabad, little came of anything. Watching the grim tableau play out before him, the Supreme Court’s Justice Naeem Akhter Afghan said “it was better not to seek our opinion on the Islamabad High Court’s system” and to let said system be fully exposed. It would be hard to overstate his words: moments after Faisal Siddiqi’s valorous defence saw Justice Afghan suspend Imaan and Hadi’s sentences, they were rearrested.

Yes, rearrested. Or so we think: Imaan’s mother Shireen Mazari is still unaware where the two were taken last night after the anti-terrorism court; whether they were in Adiala, or whether they ‘have been abducted to some other place’.

This is an old sadism stretching back at least half a century (a key precedent was the re-internment of Abdus Sattar Khan Niazi under the Bhutto regime): the arrest-bail-rearrest sequence calculated to break the spirit of political prisoners. And the superior courts have protected against said sadism in a near-unbroken line, calling it ‘arrest after arrest…in different blind reports lodged much earlier.’ The most recent flurry of immediate re-jailing has included that of Ali Wazir, Parvez Elahi, and Sheharyar Afridi – in the latter’s case, Justice Babar Sattar dubbed it a ‘fraud on the state and the Constitution’ and ‘malice in law’.

The sequence is even more bogus when looked at from another angle: Imaan and Hadi sat in Adiala jail for eight months. Each day of that imprisonment was available for this brand-new Kohsar investigation; the FIR had been lodged a year prior, and an accused can be investigated in all registered cases, whether during physical remand or, with leave, during judicial custody. No such thing happened. (In other such instances, the whole game is to keep the prisoner ignorant of the reserve case so they can’t seek bail preemptively.)

The fact remains that the superior courts have built, case by case since at least 1974, a complete jurisprudence against the revolving door, from Niazi in the ’70s to Raeesa Farooq in the ’90s, to contemporary verdicts named for PTM and PTI leaders Wazir and Afridi.

Of course, the superior courts themselves are in flux. From the shameful episode of 4:3-3:2 in the 90-days election matter – which began it all – to last night’s reimprisonment of Imaan and Hadi, the Supreme Court is fighting to enforce its writ. For some, its remnant powers are no longer in question: recently, this paper reported that the Attorney-General for Pakistan, while arguing in another case, made the remarkable statement that “after the passage of the 27th Amendment, the SC no longer had the authority to protect fundamental rights.”

By that logic, fundamental rights are now irrelevant to the Supreme Court when deciding thousands of cases still before it. Of course, it was this same attorney general that thought the 90 days matter had been decided 4:3, that civilians were fit for military trials, and that Islamabad High Court’s finest judges were best packed off to Lahore and Peshawar. What the sum of all this has been for the rule of law in Pakistan is all around us.

While hearing Imaan and Hadi’s case, Justice Afghan said, “The case may disappear from the system, but we will not.” As of today, the liberty of Pakistan’s two most devoted rights fighters is the central tenet of the Supreme Court’s relevance: it must correct this glaring injustice, and every man and woman from every bar in the country must do whatever all is possible in securing Imaan and Hadi’s release.

If two lawyers can fight for the lost and left behind so hard, it would be shameful that the rest of us choose to look away.

Header image: A moment from the 2007 lawyers movement for the restoration of the judiciary. Credit: BBC

US employers seeking to hire skilled foreign workers can use the federal government’s H-1B visa programme for a fee, allowing tech and other professionals from abroad to work in the United States for a few years.

Trump, who has pursued an aggressive immigration crackdown, has criticised the programme and wants to permanently raise the fee from between $2,000 and $5,000 to at least $100,000, though the attempt has faced legal challenges.

A Boston-based appeals court is reviewing a June decision by a federal judge who deemed the higher fee imposed by the Trump administration illegal and blocked the government from collecting it.

Another court is considering whether a judge properly rejected a challenge to the fee by the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest US business lobbying group.

Trump’s initial order for a fee hike, first released in September 2025, was set to expire this month.

It did not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, who make up a large share of new H-1B recipients, or to renewals of current visas.

Despite criticism that some companies use the visas to hire lower-paid foreign workers instead of Americans, business groups and companies say they help recruit highly skilled professionals and address a lack of qualified US workers in some industries.

The visas, established by Congress in 1990, are especially critical for tech companies seeking to recruit from India and China.

Changes to how potential visa holders are scrutinised and processed have impacted companies’ hiring and expansion plans, with some top H-1B users, such as Google parent company Alphabet, moving to increase operations in India.

The hacks occurred in May during a cybersecurity test conducted by Irregular, an independent company that conducts cybersecurity evaluations.

During a standard testing evaluation, Gemini found public information online and guessed credentials to access three websites it thought were within the scope of its test, Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security engineering, said in a statement.

“We ensured the three entities were made aware, and we worked with our training partner on the changes they’ve now made to their testing processes,” Adkins said.

“These events highlight the importance of training powerful AI models to act responsibly.”

An Irregular spokesperson said the incident involved the same issue that affected other AI labs and that all relevant labs were notified in late July.

“All known issues on our end were remedied and resolved weeks ago,” the spokesperson said.

Similar incidents linked to Irregular were disclosed by Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI. Meta said in August the incident did not involve a sandbox escape or sophisticated cyberattack, while Irregular said it was working on best practices for securely conducting AI cybersecurity evaluations.

The incidents have raised questions about the safeguards needed as AI agents gain greater autonomy and access to the internet and computer systems.

In one of the cases, the Gemini model guessed passwords until it gained access to a protected system.

In the other two cases, the model found credentials in a public repository that allowed it to then access protected systems, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Adkins said that in all three instances, the model ceased its hacking.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needed to control Greenland for strategic reasons, alarming Nato ally Denmark and sparking fierce pushback from the alliance.

Denmark and Greenland — an autonomous territory controlled by Copenhagen — both hailed the deal and said they would sign it on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

But the terms of the deal remain uncertain, and Denmark maintains its sovereignty remains intact.

In a statement, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen described the deal as “an agreement which at the same time recognises the sovereignty an territorial integrity of the kingdom and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination”.

“I am pleased to announce that the United States of America has entered into an Agreement with The Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland, that gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.

“From now on, no US adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval.”

The 80-year-old said it was an “‘Infinite Life’ Agreement, there is no end!” and said Washington would immediately start building up a large military presence in the territory.

‘Good agreement’

Trump has repeatedly warned about Russia and China trying to establish a foothold in Greenland as a strategic battle for supremacy in a warming Arctic unfolds, and the State Department left no doubt that they would not be allowed to do so.

“This agreement guarantees that China and Russia cannot have a base in Greenland, they cannot send troops to Greenland, and the necessary mechanisms are in place to prevent investment in sensitive sectors,” a State Department official said.

At the Davos economic forum this past January, Trump reached a purported deal with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte over the future of Greenland, the terms of which have remained vague.

Frederiksen had said on Monday that she was “optimistic” that ongoing discussions with the United States and Greenland since January could resolve the dispute.

She said on Friday she was “pleased that there is a prospect of a good agreement for Greenland, the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States,” adding that it was “good for Nato and Europe.”

Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the deal with the United States “strengthens” the territory’s security.

Nato tensions

Trump gave no details about how the deal would work, and it was not clear if it was linked to or substantially different from the Rutte deal.

But several media outlets have reported that the United States wants to open three new military bases in southern Greenland, in addition to the Pituffik base it already has in the north of the territory.

A 1951 defence pact, updated in 2004, already allows Washington to ramp up troop deployments and military installations on the island provided it informs Denmark and Greenland in advance.

At the height of the crisis, Trump would not rule out using force to seize the territory of 57,000 inhabitants, sowing anxiety within the EU and Nato.

Since then, tensions have cooled somewhat, and in an apparent move to assuage Trump, Nato launched a new mission to bolster security in the Arctic.