Call widens to free detained judges

February 21, 2008|By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, TRIBUNE REPORTER and Tribune correspondent Kim Barker contributed from Islamabad.

LAHORE, Pakistan — The crowd rammed into the home of Aitzaz Ahsan on Wednesday, lifting the detained head of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association onto their shoulders and carrying him outside as they thrust "Restore Judiciary Now" posters into the air.

While Ahsan later voluntarily returned to his house arrest, he joined the crowd in demanding the restoration of Pakistan's Supreme Court and others in the legal system, warning that his lawyers group would march on the capital if it doesn't happen before March 9.

Emboldened by a sweeping defeat of President Pervez Musharraf's allies in parliamentary elections, Pakistani opposition leaders are demanding the release of detained judges and the rollback of other measures taken when he suspended the constitution for six weeks last fall.

Those issues will be central to negotiations due to begin Thursday between opposition party leaders tasked with forming a new government. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has demanded the restoration of the Supreme Court. Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, called for the release of detained judges and lawyers but wants the reinstatement of the Supreme Court left up to the new parliament.

Reinstating Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and his colleagues would mean bringing back justices who had challenged Musharraf. He fired them just before they were to rule whether his October re-election was valid.

While Zardari hasn't ruled out eventually working with Musharraf, Sharif has repeatedly called for his resignation. Both have demanded changes in the way Pakistan conducts the war on terror.

"Parliament can think they can ignore [the judiciary problems] but the lawyers of Pakistan are not going to ignore it," said Ahsan, who spearheaded protests by lawyers last year that contributed to the widespread turmoil forcing Musharraf to call elections. "We will march on Islamabad from all directions."

President Bush paused on his trip to Africa on Wednesday and welcomed the elections as fair. U.S. officials have encouraged the election winners to work with Musharraf.

"It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government," Bush said. "The question then is: Will they be friends of the United States? I certainly hope so."

With just six races remaining to report unofficial counts, the two top opposition parties had won 154 of 268 parliamentary seats, the election commission reported. That would give them about 60 percent of the seats if they decide to work together, shy of the two-thirds they would need to seek Musharraf's ouster unless they bring other parties into a coalition.

Restoring the judiciary would have wide implications. Among the issues the Supreme Court was investigating before it was disbanded in November were the disappearances of dozens of nationalists and hundreds of suspected terrorists arrested by police. For Musharraf, it became an unwanted probe into how Pakistan was conducting its war on terror.

Unlike in the U.S., top Pakistan justices can bring cases into the high court on their own, and Chaudhry sometimes did that after reading about an issue in the newspaper or because people would show up in his courtroom demanding justice.

Hamid Khan, a lawyer who represented Chaudhry after he was fired, remembered one case in which the government produced a man who had been held at Guantanamo Bay and then released to Pakistani authorities. He was weak in court, Khan said, and died the next day.

Musharraf suspended Chaudhry from the Supreme Court on misconduct charges March 9, the date Ahsan now wants to mark with a street protest if the judiciary is not restored. After a court battle led by Ahsan, Chaudhry eventually was reinstated. Ahsan also led lawyers' protests throughout the country that summer, spurring widespread anti-Musharraf sentiment. In November, Musharraf sacked the Supreme Court again, this time before it could rule on whether Musharraf was qualified to seek another presidential term.

Sixty other high court judges also were deposed. Ahsan was jailed and eventually put under house arrest. Chaudhry, along with his family, was detained in his home.

Ahsan supporters now are pushing for him to be named prime minister in the party negotiations. The U.S. consul in Lahore also visited him Wednesday.