Musharraf indicted in judges detention case

Islamabad: An anti-terrorism court in Islamabad on Saturday indicted former military ruler retired General Pervez Musharraf in a judges detention case.

Musharraf rejected the charges read out to him by the anti-terrorism court judge Kausar Abbas Zaidi who held a hearing in the case at the former president’s farmhouse where he has been under detention since the middle of April.

The judge summoned prosecution witnesses at the next hearing of the case, which is based on a complaint lodged in 2009 with the police by advocate Mohammad Aslam Ghuman.

Musharraf has been indicted for allegedly detaining over 60 superior courts’ judges, including Pakistan’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after proclamation of a state of emergency in the country on November 3, 2007.

The case is one of the three against Musharraf in courts in the country. He is also accused of involvement in a conspiracy to murder Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and over the 2006 killing of Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti.

Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March after nearly four years of self-imposed exile to contest the May 11 general election. He was barred from contesting the election.

The former president has been granted bail in the judges’ detention case as well as in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case.

But his bail plea in Bugti killing case was rejected earlier this week by an anti-terrorism court in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province.

A police team from Quetta on Friday carried the arrest order issued by the court against Musharraf but said the former president would remain at the farmhouse for security reasons.

The provincial government in Quetta has approached the Balochistan High Court to transfer the Bugti case to an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad, citingthreats to Musharraf’s life.