New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Courage and right path will always be recognised over people who try to suppress it by imprisoning and applying censorship. Truth cannot be suppressed for long, the quicker Mush learns it the better for him.

New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Washington, Jan.30 : The New York Bar Association (NYSBA) has decided to honour incarcerated Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association (PSCBA) President Aitzaz Ahsan in asbentia with the annual Award for Distinction in International Law and Affairs.

The award will be presented this week in the presence of over 5,000 lawyers, reports the Daily Times.

The NYSBA said Ahsan has been under frequent arrest for his efforts to restore Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as chief justice, noting that Pakistan’s legal and judicial community has been in conflict with the country’s leadership since President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution and replaced seven of the Supreme Court’s 11 judges.

Earlier this month, the New York City Bar Association granted honorary membership to Chaudhry.

In November last year, the city and state bars, as well as the New York County Lawyers Association, organised a rally, attended by about 700 people, at the Manhattan Supreme Court in support of Pakistan’s lawyers and judges.

http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/322923/cs/1/

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Well deserved!

It is because of courageous people like Aitzaz Ahsan, Pakistan has hope, despite the efforts of the dictator

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

A great man indeed. Unforunately in Pakistan donkey and pigs like Musharraf and the Choudry bros have power and not the likes of Ahsan...

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

This is continuation of violation of laws and human rights by the dictator and his clown. Hopefully, their day of reckoning will arrive soon.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=12624

Aitzaz, Kurd to be freed, re-arrested

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: The government is all set to free and then re-arrest immediately three detained lawyers on the expiry of their 90-day detention period on Feb 1 in a move to outmanoeuvre the constitutional bar on preventive detention.

One of the top legal minds of the government confided to The News that the government has decided to free Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, Ali Ahmad Kurd and Justice (retd) Tariq Mehmud for few hours or a day and then re-arrest them by issuing a fresh executive order. About detained judges, including deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, government sources said there is nothing to bother about them because their detention was without any formal order.

“Deposed judges were not under detention,” the source said, asking, “if you have any formal order to prove us wrong?” Under the Constitution, no person can be kept in preventive detention for more than 90 days unless a judicial review board certifies that the person is a threat to public safety, but the government has not referred cases of any of three leading lawyers for judicial review.

Under the Constitution their cases are required to be approved by such judicial bodies in case the government intends to retain their preventive detention beyond mandatory period. A top government legal mind, on condition of anonymity, said the government does not intend to set the three lawyers free and their cases would not be referred to the judicial review boards.

The source said the constitutional bar would easily be defeated by freeing detainees for sometime and then getting them rearrested under fresh executive orders. Two of the three lawyers – Aitzaz Ahsan and Ali Muhammad Kurd – though arrested on Nov 3 were not detained on one order, but under three successive orders for 30 days each, instead. However, Justice (retd) Tariq was detained for 90 days under one executive order.

Independent sources point out if the government can avoid the 90-day limit by passing three or more one-month orders in succession then the limit can always be flouted and the provision of the Constitution would be meaningless.

“The Constitution cannot be subverted in this manner,” a source said. Clause 4 of Article 10 of the Constitution provides as follows: "10. Safeguards as to arrest and detention: (4) No law providing for preventive detention shall be made except to deal with persons acting in a manner prejudicial to the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, or external affairs of Pakistan, or public order, or the maintenance of supplies or services, and no such law shall authorise the detention of a person for a period exceeding three months unless the appropriate Review Board has, after affording him an opportunity of being heard in person, reviewed his case and reported, before the expiration of the said period, that there is, in its opinion, sufficient cause for such detention, and, if the detention is continued after the said period of three months, unless the appropriate Review Board has reviewed his case and reported, before the expiration of each period of three months, that there is, in its opinion, sufficient cause for such detention.

Explanation I: in this Article, “the appropriate Review Board” means (i) in the case of a person detained under a Federal Law, a board appointed by the chief justice of Pakistan and consisting of a chairman and two other persons, each of whom is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court or a high court ; and (ii) in the case of a person detained under a Provincial Law, a board appointed by the chief justice of the high court concerned and consisting of a chairman and two other persons, each of whom is or has been a judge of a high court. Explanation II: the opinion of a review board shall be expressed in terms of views of the majority of its members."

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=12629

Deposed CJ answers back Rashid Qureshi rejects Iftikhar’s charges

By Sohail Khan

ISLAMABAD: In an open letter addressed to the president of the European Parliament, the president of France, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and to the World Economic Forum, deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Wednesday said President Musharraf had slandered him and his colleagues during his recent visit to Europe.

Advocate Athar Minnallah during a crowded press conference here at Islamabad District Bar distributed the copies of the letter among newspersons. “I am the Chief Justice of Pakistan presently detained in my residence since November 3, 2007, pursuant to some verbal and unspecified order passed by General Musharraf,” the letter begins with these words.

“If civilized norms of justice will not be allowed to operate than that space will, inevitably, be occupied by those who believe in more brutal and instant justice: the extremists in the wings,” Justice Chaudhry said.

Justice Chaudhry apprised the world community that he and his colleagues have been detained in their official residences since November 3, 2007.

“With me are also my spouse and three of my young children, all school-going and one a special child, and such are the conditions of our detention that we cannot even step out on the lawn for the winter sun because that space is occupied by police pickets,” said the deposed chief justice.

He asked the world community to take firsthand information of the barricades and his detention and that of his children from their ambassadors, High Commission representative in Pakistan.

“There can be no democracy without an independent judiciary and there can be no independent judge in Pakistan until the action of November 3 is reversed. Whatever the will of some desperate men the struggle of the valiant lawyers and civil society of Pakistan will bear fruit and they are not giving up,” Justice Chaudhry said.

He asked, “Is there a precedent in history, all history, of 60 judges, including three chief justices (one of the Supreme Court and two of Pakistan’s four High Courts), being dismissed, arrested and detained at the whim of one man? I have failed to discover any such event in medieval times under any emperor, king, or Sultan, or even when a dictator has had full military sway over any country in more recent times. But, this incredible outrage has happened in the 21st century at the hands of an extremist general out on a ‘charm offensive’ of western capitals and one whom the West supports.”

AP adds: In the letter Justice Iftikhar said: “Barbed-wire barricades surround the residence and all phone lines are cut. Even the water connection to my residence has been periodically turned off. I am being persuaded to resign and to forego my office, which is what I am not prepared to do.”

Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf’s spokesman, dismissed Chaudhry’s claim he was under house detention, saying he was in fact illegally occupying an official residence that he had been asked to vacate.

Qureshi also rejected Chaudhry’s description of the president as an “extremist general.” “The world recognises him as a moderate and a balanced personality. He has been working for the last eight years to make Pakistan’s conservative society into a moderate one,” he said.

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

On the request of PPP leadership aitraz hassan will continue to be live under house arrest for rest of his life. Same alike theif justice and Dr. A Q Khan.

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Is this what you think or its a confirm news. If so, please provide the source.

Thanks.

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Why doesn't the New York Bar Association fight for the rights of the prisoners in Gauntanoma Bay...or why did they not fight against the illegal invasion of Iraq. After Aitraaz Ahsan, I'm sure they'll honour Salman Rushdie...

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Or they could hit a new low by honouring Musharraf.

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http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5inYvBY8pR4e7tQu9Zj3Km_LacgvQ

Pakistani lawyers, ex-military urge Musharraf to go

6 hours ago

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Thousands of Pakistani lawyers burned effigies of President Pervez Musharraf during nationwide protests Thursday to press for the release of the country’s deposed chief justice, witnesses said.

A group of retired Pakistani military officers meanwhile urged Musharraf to step down and hand over power to Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who has been under house arrest since Musharraf sacked him on November 3.

In Islamabad, hundreds of attorneys in black suits torched a small cloth dummy of Musharraf outside Chaudhry’s residence and chanted “Death to Musharraf” and other slogans, an AFP reporter said.

Separately around 3,000 lawyers, joined by members of former cricketer Imran Khan’s opposition political party and hundreds of hardline Islamists, also burned an effigy of the president in the eastern city of Lahore.

A further 4,000 protesters shouted “Go Musharraf, go” in the southern city of Karachi and there were protests in the central Pakistani city of Multan and the northwestern city of Peshawar.

A bomb exploded outside an anti-terrorism court in the southwestern city of Quetta earlier Thursday, wounding three people. It was not immediately clear if it was linked to the lawyers’ protests.

Pakistan’s legal community has held weekly protests to call for the release of Chaudhry and several top lawyers who have been detained since November, despite the lifting of emergency rule on December 15.

With Musharraf facing growing dissent ahead of elections next month, a group of 200 retired generals, air marshals and other officers from the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society made fresh calls for him to step down.

“Musharraf should step down and hand over power to Justice Chaudhry, who is still constitutional chief justice,” former Pakistan Air Force chief Asghar Khan told reporters after a meeting of the group.

He said Chaudhry should form a neutral caretaker government to supervise free and fair elections next month.

“We do not recognise any electoral process under Musharraf and the present election commission,” Khan said, adding that another senior former judge, Rana Bhagwandas, should be appointed election commissioner.

Bhagwandas – who was also sacked for refusing to endorse emergency rule – said police had stopped him leaving Karachi on Thursday when he tried to catch a plane to Islamabad.

“These officials misbehaved with me when I said I am going to Islamabad to meet Chief Justice Chaudhry,” Bhagwandas told AFP.

“I was about to leave my house for the airport when some police officials came and told me, ‘You cannot leave Karachi’. This shows the weakness of the government,” he added.

Officials were not immediately available to comment on his claims.

Former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, who headed the military from 1988 to 1991, said Musharraf had tarnished the image of the armed forces and called on all ex-servicemen to help restore it.

“We should also work together to strengthen democracy by removing the only impediment in its way – Pervez Musharraf,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Chaudhry called on Western leaders in an open letter Wednesday to stop backing Musharraf, b*****ng him an “extremist general” and saying he, his family and some other judges were being held in “medieval” conditions.

Opponents accuse Musharraf of sacking Chaudhry to head off a Supreme Court ruling that could have overturned his re-election as president.

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

How is handing power to a chief justice constitutional? :D
Not to mention a PCO judge ?????

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Re: New York Bar Association to honour Aitzaz Ahsan

Mashallah. At least the EX CJ, the man that took oath on the PCO, has access to the media. Can't be that medievil. :)