ISLAMABAD - Pakistan yesterday said that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had no jurisdiction to hear Indian spy Kulbushan Jadhav’s case as it was linked to Pakistan’s security.

Addressing a weekly media briefing here, Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said that Pakistan had submitted its reply to the ICJ under Article 36 of the United Nations Charter.

 “In some issues, Pakistan does recognise the jurisdiction of the ICJ. Jadhav’s case is related to Pakistan’s security. India is just twisting the facts and trying to give this case a humanitarian angle,” he said.

Earlier, the ICJ asked Pakistan to stay Jadhav’s execution until a final verdict. “Pakistan shall take all measures at its disposal to ensure that Jadhav is not executed pending the final decision in these proceedings,” the ICJ ruled yesterday.

Zakaria said that India stood exposed in state-sponsored terrorism, terror financing, spying and subversive activities as it had desperately tried to divert the world attention by presenting Jhadav’s case from the humanitarian angle.

“India is trying to defend a person whose actions have led to the killing of scores of innocent Pakistanis,” he added.

In the past, he said, the ICJ had indicated provisional measures to prevent executions in three cases, based on the violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

“These included (i) the case of Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Paraguay vs USA) of 9th April 1998; (ii) La Grand case (Germany vs USA) of 3rd March 1999; and (iii) Avena and other Mexican nationals case (Mexico vs USA) of 5th Feb 2003,” he said.

Zakaria said that Pakistan had entered a Revised Declaration under Article 36(2) of the statute of the ICJ on March 27, 2017. “This is a common practice. It is stronger declaration than the earlier that was entered in 1960. Many clauses have been added to the earlier declaration including, excluding ‘all matters related to the national security of Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ which in the current case totally excludes the jurisdiction of ICJ under Article 36(2) in our view,” he maintained.