Lawyers seek support for 'black flag week'

Islamabad: The office holders of the top bar association of Pakistan held a meeting on Saturday in front of the entry gate of the Supreme Court after they were barred from entering the premises.

Addressing the meeting, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, said the lawyers would continue their movement for the reinstatement of the deposed judges and the independence of the judiciary.

Ahsan, who was released from house detention in Lahore recently after a four-month confinement, said a sovereign parliament was unthinkable without an independent judiciary.

Later, the lawyers marched to two commercial centres in the capital to seek support for a "black flag week" to be observed by lawyers throughout the country from today to March 16 as part of their campaign.

Ahsan condemned the detention of sacked chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and a number of other deposed judges at their residences for the last four months as unlawful and outrageous.

Spearheading the lawyers' movement, Ahsan held a meeting on Friday with the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Asif Ali Zardari, to discuss how the two election victors, PPP to which Ahsan belongs, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of former premier Nawaz Sharif, intended to reinstate the deposed judges.

He later said the issue could be resolved through an executive order but the lawyers would wait for the parliament to become functional and do the needful at the earliest.

Justice Chaudhry and scores of other judges of superior courts were fired when Musharraf imposed emergency in November as then army chief.

The purge came ahead of an expected judicial verdict on Musharraf's controversial re-election.