One of Pakistan's most distinguished jurists and a dissident lawyer approached a police cordon on Wednesday in a residential quarter here to demonstrate that the government's claims it had lifted house arrest on a former justice were not true.
The government had broadcast news that the dismissed chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, under house arrest since de facto martial law was declared more than two weeks ago, was now free to move around.
So Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former Supreme Court justice, and lawyer Athar Minallah, accompanied by a large group of the legal fraternity, turned up at noon where Chaudhry lives. Confronted by a line of police officers and a curtain of barbed wire, they asked to see him.
They were turned away, proving, they said, that Chaudhry and other dismissed Supreme Court justices who live in the same area were still captive.
Minutes later, as the pair drove down Constitution Avenue, the broad boulevard of the capital, five men in civilian clothes stopped their car and pulled Minallah out.
In short order Minallah, a member of the Cabinet of General Pervez Musharraf in the early years of his presidency but now an energetic organizer of lawyers' protests, was arrested.
"I asked them to produce an order for arrest," said Ahmed, describing the scene with the plainclothes officers. "They didn't produce any order. I said this is not proper. But Athar said: `If they want to take me, let them take me.'"
Minallah was pushed into a police van and hauled off.
Ahmed, considered one of the most principled of Pakistan's judges, refused to take the oath of office on the Supreme Court after sharraf grabbed power in 1999.
As part of his challenge to Musharraf, Ahmed filed a petition in the Supreme Court asserting that the general's re-election as president early last month was illegal.
The petition was rejected on Monday by the Supreme Court, which has been packed with Musharraf loyalists since the Nov. 3 emergency decree.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS