Benazir assassination case: Government to seek Musharraf extradition

The govt will request assistance from law enforcement agencies in the UK to extradite former President Musharraf.

ISLAMABAD: The government will request assistance from law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom to extradite former President Pervez Musharraf for his alleged connection to the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) will be submitting the extradition request through the Pakistani High Commission in London and not Interpol as is customary in these circumstances. The matter is expected to be complicated since there is no extradition treaty between the United Kingdom and Pakistan.

“We have no extradition treaty with England. Therefore, we are writing through Pakistani High Commission to UK for Musharraf’s extradition,” said FIA prosecutor Muhammad Azhar Chaudhry. He added that the high commission would send the summons to Musharraf after consulting the home department of the UK.

Prosecutors at the FIA have obtained a summons to compel the former president to appear at an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi by March 5. The summons was first delivered to Musharraf’s residence in Chak Shehzad, a suburb of Islamabad, but the FIA was told by the domestic staff there that he resides in London. Hence the summons was reissued on Saturday to be sent to his resident in London.

The former president’s spokesperson said that the attempt by the government to extradite Musharraf was futile and that he did not plan on cooperating with the investigation.

“Musharraf will never lend a hand to the FIA’s team, especially after the way they have treated him,” said Barrister Saif Ali Khan, the spokesperson for Musharraf.

The director-general of the FIA, Wasim Ahmad, emphasised that his agency would pursue the extradition aggressively, adding that the FIA will leave no stone unturned to arrest the former president.

The FIA had also considered sending the extradition request to the United Arab Emirates while the former president was visiting Dubai in order to meet with members of the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), the party he founded after leaving office in 2008. Ultimately, however, the investigating team decided that London was a better venue to try extradition.

Diplomatic sources told The Express Tribune that the government was working on securing extradition treaties with Britain, the United States and other European countries in order to prosecute criminals who have fled the country.

Pakistan has been able to request extradition of indicted individuals from the United States in the past, owing to a legal interpretation that allows for such a measure, based on the extradition treaty the United States signed with Britain in 1931. According to this interpretation, Pakistan is considered a successor state of the British Empire in the subcontinent and thus has the same obligations and privileges as the colonial British government. Hamesh Khan, a former executive at the Bank of Punjab, was extradited from the United States to Pakistan in March 2010.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2011.