A Pakistani court on Friday summoned the interior minister over corruption charges, as the government grappled with the fallout from a court ruling scrapping an amnesty for a raft of politicians.
The defense minister has already been barred from leaving the country, as the top anti-corruption body begins implementing a Supreme Court ruling binning a decree protecting politicians, including Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has called for travel bans on more than 250 people since the Supreme Court on Wednesday annulled a 2007 amnesty, sparking calls for Zardari to resign and rattling the US-backed government.
“The accountability court has summoned Rehman Malik ... We have also reopened cases of 52 more people,” said Salman Butt, deputy prosecutor general of the NAB in Sindh Province.
A court official in Sindh said that Malik would have to appear along with two other Zardari allies on Jan. 8.
His lawyer, Khwaja Naveed, told reporters that Malik was on bail in one case — dating back almost a decade — at the time the amnesty was passed.
“Malik is ready to appear again if summoned by the accountability court,” Naveed said.
NAB officials said earlier the body had instructed the interior ministry to put the names of 253 people on the “exit control list” restricting travel.
“They include politicians, bureaucrats, ex-military officers and some diplomats,” NAB media officer Naveed Sattar said.
Pakistani Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told local TV late on Thursday he had been due to go on an official three-day visit to China, but that his name had been put on the list restricting travel.
“It was in connection with a corruption case, but there is no corruption case against me — it is only an inquiry which is pending against me for the past 12 years. I will strongly defend myself in the court,” Mukhtar said.
The NAB later put out a statement denying Mukhtar was on the list, but it did not explain why he was not allowed to leave.
Late on Friday, a statement from the prime minister’s office said that a formal inquiry had been ordered over the defense minister’s travel ban.
It also said that Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had suspended the interior secretary, the additional director of the FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) and two inspectors, without giving further details.
The amnesty was passed in October 2007 by former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. It quashed charges against a number of politicians, including Zardari and his wife and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto — who was assassinated two months later — to allow them to stand for office.
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