Musharraf treason case: ‘Lawyer’s movement was foreign funded’

Counsel for ex-president says struggle to reinstate deposed judges was meant to destabilise the country.

ISLAMABAD:

One of former president Pervez Musharraf’s lawyers claimed before the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the 2007 movement for restoration of the judges deposed after the emergency was “foreign funded” and meant to destabilise the country.

The claim created a commotion in the courtroom where hearing was under way of petitions demanding that Musharraf be tried for treason for imposing emergency, holding the constitution in abeyance and deposing judges.

Sheikh Ahsanuddin Advocate, one of the petitioners, and other lawyers present in the courtroom objected to the remarks of Ahmed Raza Kasuri and urged the three-member bench headed by Justice Jawwad S Khawaja to restrain Musharraf’s lawyer from making such claims.

“Let him say anything he wants to say,” Justice Khawaja said, adding it would be better for Kasuri to focus on legal arguments rather than political ones.

Justice Khawaja said that the rule of law would never destabilise the country. “The days when judiciary used to shy away from facing tough questions had gone,” he said.

Abettors to treason

Kasuri said that if Musharraf was to be charged with treason for imposing emergency in 2007, the people that had supported him in imposing martial law in 1999 should also be held accountable.

The dictator was at the helm of affairs due to abettment of the top brass of the armed forces and the judiciary, he said, asking rhetorically whether they would be tried too.

Kasuri argued that by giving constitutional cover to the military takeover and the overthrow of an elected government by Musharraf in 1999, the judiciary had abetted in the imposition of the martial law and was thus also responsible for the action of November 3, 2007 taken by the regime.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2013.