November 5, 2007 – 3:41PM
Pakistan police have baton-charged lawyers protesting against President Pervez Musharraf’s emergency rule, as police continue to detain his opponents.
Also on Monday, deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry declared Musharraf’s post-emergency set up “illegal and unconstitutional”.
In one of his actions after declaring emergency rule in the country on Saturday, Musharraf removed Chaudhry and appointed Hameed Dogar as chief justice to head the country’s Supreme Court.
The general suspended the country’s constitution and issued a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) but several judges, including Chaudhry, refused to take the oath under the new order.
“Everything that is happening today is illegal, unconstitutional and against the orders of the Supreme Court,” Chaudhry told local daily The News, in his first reported comments since the crisis engulfed Pakistan.
He told the paper by telephone that all recent appointments made in the superior judiciary had “no legal validity.”
Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, suspended Chaudhry on March 9 following allegations that the judge had abused his position and obtained a top police job for his son and other privileges for himself.
He was reinstated on July 20 when a 13-judge bench declared Musharraf’s March 9 action illegal, in a major blow to the embattled president.
Chaudhry said he was confident he would stage another comeback.
On declaring the emergency, Musharraf cited spiralling militancy and hostile judges to justify his action.
He imposed reporting curbs on the media in a bid to stop outrage spilling onto the streets.
Police baton-charged dozens of lawyers protesting outside the High Court in the economic capital Karachi on Monday, lawyers said.
“Police beat lawyers with batons as they came to High Court in the morning. Many of them have been arrested,” Akhtar Hussain, a former president of Sindh High Court Bar Association, told Reuters.
A main Islamist opposition party said authorities had also detained 600-700 of its supporters overnight in southern and central provinces. The detention of Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami supporters followed the arrests of hundreds of opposition figures the government said were a “preventive” measure.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed disappointment with Musharraf in terms seldom heard before from US officials more accustomed to praising the Pakistani leader’s support in the battle against al-Qaeda.
“The United States has never put all of its chips on Musharraf,” Rice said, urging Pakistan to get back on the road to democracy, and warning US aid to its ally was under review.
Washington has given Islamabad around $US10 billion ($A10.87 billion) over the last five years.
Despite the detentions, a lawyers’ movement that led the fight against Musharraf when he tried to sack Chaudhry earlier this year, was planning protests in front of courts in most major cities.
Lawyers, journalists, opposition politicians, and ordinary Pakistanis said they believed Musharraf’s main motive in declaring emergency rule was to pre-empt the Supreme Court invalidating his re-election as president last month.
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