Musharraf extradition: Pakistan seeks help from Commonwealth

Legal experts sceptical of government’s extradition attempts.

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan has sought the Commonwealth’s cooperation in extraditing former president Pervez Musharraf from Britain for his alleged involvement in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The Pakistan High Commission in the United Kingdom wrote to Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma, asking him to put pressure on the UK Home Department to start criminal proceedings in British courts against Musharraf, according to sources.

An additional complication is Britain’s obligations to humanitarian laws of the European Union, which abolished the death penalty within the EU and prohibits extradition of suspects to countries where they are likely to face execution.

“The UK Home department will have to obey the ‘Capital Punishment Laws’ of European countries,” said one legal expert. “They may fear that the Pakistani court will award a death sentence to Musharraf.”

Pakistan has already sent a request to the UK Home Department, requesting extradition of Musharraf, though legal experts suggest that the request is unlikely to be met with a favourable response since there is no extradition treaty between Pakistan and Britain.

Government officials say the UK is bound by its obligations to the Commonwealth to coordinate with courts in other Commonwealth countries.

The British government has not yet responded to Pakistan’s request, according to Azhar Chaudhry, a special prosecutor at the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). He added that the British government did confirm that they had delivered the court summons issued by the Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court adjudicating the case.

Musharraf’s spokesperson Barrister Saif said that the government’s attempts at extraditing Musharraf were futile. “Musharraf will never lend a hand to FIA’s team especially in the way they had treated him,” he said.

Meanwhile, the FIA has decided to seek more time to produce Musharraf before the court. It will also request the court to declare him an absconder, according to a senior official.

The next hearing of the case will be held on March 26.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2011.