In its unprecedented short order announced this week, the special court issued a death sentence to the former military ruler for high treason for subverting the country's constitution in 2007. Musharraf, 76, has been living in self-imposed exile since 2016 and is undergoing medical treatment in a Dubai hospital. Avoiding gaol basically.
The court has directed law enforcement officials to arrest the "fugitive-convict" to ensure the death sentence is carried out. But "if found dead, corpse be dragged to the D-Chowk, Islamabad, Pakistan, and be hanged for 03 days," the ruling said, referring to a place just outside the national Parliament.
Top government officials told a hurriedly called news conference Thursday evening that they had decided to initiate legal proceedings against Judge Waqar Ahmad Seth for issuing a "despicable order" that they said was in violation of the constitution.
"Our plea is that such a judge has got no authority to be a judge of any high court or the Supreme Court ... . [H]e must immediately be stopped from performing his official duties," said Pakistani Law Minister Farogh Naseem. This statement is honestly a beaut. I wish we could use it for so many others.
Neither the constitution nor Islam allows public hangings, the minister said.
Prominent Supreme Court attorney Aitzaz Ahsan compared the special court's ruling with the harsh Islamic justice of the radical Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where public hangings and executions were common.
The rest of it's at VOA... but this is enough.