Re: Has everyone forgotten about ex-CJ Iftikhar?
Just for you Reza
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSISL14553720071122
No early release for judges who defied Musharraf
Thu Nov 22, 2007 8:29am EST
By Simon Cameron-Moore
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - There are some voices President Pervez Musharraf clearly fears more than others after three weeks of emergency rule in Pakistan.
Judges and lawyers whose interpretation of the law posed the most serious challenge to Musharraf’s authority remain either under house arrest or in prison.
Thousands of other opponents detained were freed this week, as Musharraf responded to intense pressure from the international community and Pakistan opposition parties to reverse the authoritarian steps he took on November 3.
Days away from the end of his first term as president and a constitutional obligation to give up his army post, Musharraf’s main objective in imposing emergency rule was to get rid of judges before they got rid of him.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and a handful of other judges stayed inside the Supreme Court the night the emergency was imposed, stubbornly refusing to sign-off on Musharraf’s authoritarian action. They were dismissed and escorted home by security officials.
“These seven judges are our real heroes,” said Nasim Zehra, a political analyst. “We can’t let them be lost.”
Zehra lamented the repeated readiness of both military and civilian leaders to put self-interest above the law, in a country ruled by generals for more than half the time since it was formed out of the partition of India in 1947.
“The issue of the dismissed judges has to be resolved because these are the men who after 60 years stood up,” she said.
Chaudhry remains under house arrest with his family at their official residence in Islamabad, as do other judges.
Rana Bhagwandas, the sacked deputy chief justice, has tested the limits of his custody by visiting his dentist. On Wednesday, he spoke to Dawn Television. He said the appointment of judges in their place was illegal “and any judgement rendered by them will have no constitutional protection or validity”.
“SUCH A SHAM”
Aitzaz Ahsan, the lawyer who successfully defended Chaudhry after Musharraf suspended him in March, is in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, the garrison town next door to Islamabad.
Witty and waspish, Ahsan, a former cabinet minister from Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, was one of the most powerful orators on the National Assembly floor.
A canny politician, he orchestrated rallies round the country that drew tens of thousands of people to support Chaudhry and resounded with chants of “Go, Musharraf, Go”.
Ahsan’s wife Bushra said the authorities were putting every obstacle in his way to stop him filing nomination papers by November 26 for a parliamentary election in January, and there was nowhere she could petition for her husband.
“He’s neither a militant, nor a terrorist. He’s a man of the pen. He can only command his arguments,” she told Reuters.
“This is such a sham. What is the next parliament?” she added. “There is no judiciary, there is no rule of law.”
Athar Minallah, a lawyer who helped relay Chaudhry’s words of defiance to the media and the legal fraternity after he was put under house arrest on November 3, was finally picked up on Wednesday and deposited in Adiala, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
There are another five Supreme Court Judges confined in the Judges Colony, near the capital’s Constitution Avenue.
At least another five are under house arrest in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and the city where the political pulse of Pakistan beats strongest.
Among them is Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday, who headed the bench last July that reinstated Chaudhry in a historic first ruling by the Supreme Court against a military ruler.
Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW, in a statement issued on Thursday from New York, took issue with President George W. Bush for not being tougher with Musharraf, a valued U.S. ally against al Qaeda and Islamist militancy.
“Rather than making ridiculous statements that signal no consequences for Musharraf’s dictatorial moves, Washington should suspend further dealings with him and the army until he releases these judges, restores them to office, and reverses the state of emergency,” Adams said.
The general has vowed to step down as army chief and will be sworn in for a second five-year term within a few days after the new judges on the bench dismissed the last challenge on Thursday to his re-election last month.
“They are not judges, they are dummies,” Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former provincial chief justice who ran against Musharraf, said of the bench that gave the general the all-clear for his re-election.
(Editing by Simon Gardner and David Fogarty)
