World | Pakistan
Bhutto house arrest lifted
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was freed from house arrest, hours after she was stopped from leaving her villa.
- Gulf News Report
- Published: 21:46 November 9, 2007
- Image Credit: Reuters
- Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto speaks to supporters and the media from behind a barbed wire barricade outside her residence in Islamabad yesterday.
Dubai: Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was freed from house arrest late last night, hours after she was stopped from leaving her Islamabad villa to lead a rally against President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule.
"The detention order has been withdrawn," Aamir Ali Ahmad, Acting Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad, was quoted by Reuters as saying. Earlier in the day police prevented Bhutto from leaving her home and sealed off the capital and the nearby city of Rawalpindi to stop a rally against Musharraf.
"The government has been paralysed," Bhutto shouted to supporters across a barbed-wire barricade. "If [Musharraf] restores the constitution, takes off his uniform, gives up the office of the chief of army staff and announces an election by January 15, then it's okay," Bhutto was quoted as saying.
Reacting to the arrest, the White House called for an early end to the state of emergency in Pakistan and urged Musharraf to set a date for election. "Free and fair elections require a lifting of the state of emergency," Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, was quoted as saying.
Pakistan police also rounded up thousands of Bhutto's supporters in Rawalpindi while in Peshawar, a suicide bombing at a minister's home killed four people. Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam was unhurt.
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