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| India-Pakistan |
| Police fire rubber bullets, arrest Pak protesters |
| 2007-03-17 |
| Pakistan riot police fired rubber bullets at protesters yesterday and arrested dozens of people as they tried to contain an angry protest over the sacking of the nation's top judge. Hundreds of demonstrators hurled rocks and bottles at paramilitary troops and police outside the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was due to attend a hearing into misconduct charges. Violent clashes also broke out in the eastern city of Lahore despite overnight raids by police across the country that seized lawyers, opposition party activists and Muslim hardliners. Military ruler President Pervez Musharraf drew international condemnation when he sacked Chaudhry last week, a move that also set off days of rallies and intensified Islamist and secular opposition anger over his leadership. The opposition says Musharraf is trying to intimidate the judiciary before they hear key issues -- including his planned re-election by parliament and his dual role as president and army chief -- later this year. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #6 It is reliably learnt that a group of six corps commanders in the Pakistan Army has jointly written to President Pervez Musharraf expressing their disquiet over the unwise manner in which the case of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, the suspended Chief Justice, has been handled by Musharraf and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and over the shocking ransacking of the offices of the GEO TV, a private TV, channel and the manhandling of Hamid Mir, its leading journalist, who is well known all over the world, on March 16,2007. Rattled by the continuing demonstrations, the criticism by some of his officers and the first public remarks by the US State Department indicating unease over his action, Musharraf has asked Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the former Prime Minister, who is a good personal friend of the suspended Chief Justice, to find a face-saving. Both are from Balochistan. The face-saving formula now under discussion envisages a ruling by the SJC that the charges against the suspended Chief Justice were not serious enough to warrant any action against him, his restoration to his position as the Chief Justice and an assurance by him that while the cases relating to the missing persons (many of them are in the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay) would continue to be on his file, he will not pursue them . He will adjourn the hearings on them repeatedly. The Chief justice is till now not prepared to give this assurance. Musharraf has promised Jamali that if he persuades the suspended Chief Justice to co-operate, he would restore him (Jamali) to the post of the Prime Minister from which he was replaced by Shaukat Aziz in 2004. As part of the damage control, Musharraf has blamed the police and the para-military forces for the ransacking of the GEO TV office and the manhandling of Hamid Mir. He is trying to project it as a rogue operation by the police and para-military officers, which shocked him. He has already suspended 15 police officers for this. These suspensions have caused resentment against him in the police. Reliable police sources say that the order to silence the GEO TV and Hamid Mir came from Tariq Aziz, Musharraf's National Security Adviser. The police officers are furious that now they are being made the fall guy. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-17 15:04 |
| #5 |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-17 14:57 |
| #4 Here's the worst part of all of this: the Paks are making me feel sorry for lawyers. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2007-03-17 11:59 |
| #3 Police in Pakistan's Lahore city stormed a convention of lawyers on Saturday and arrested several of them. Lawyers attending the meet were brutally beaten up and lawyers in the High Court struck back with stones, reports say. The High Court has now been sealed. The violent standoff began after President Pervez Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhry. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-17 06:59 |
| #2 A former Pak President got arrested as well.. Riot police in Islamabad fired tear gas today and detained dozens of protesters - including an opposition leader and President Musharraf's predecessor as president (Rafiq Tarar)as demonstrations spread over the GovernmentÂ’s sacking of PakistanÂ’s chief judge. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-17 06:50 |
| #1 Pak Chief Justice being forced into a car. He had sent away his car and driver, insisting he and his wife would walk to the courthouse. Well, the Pak police had different ideas...  |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-17 06:49 |