Deposed Pakistan Chief Justice Still Under House Arrest
More than 10 weeks after the president of Pakistan suspended the country’s constitution and declared what many considered martial law, the chief justice of the country’s supreme court remains under house arrest with his family. Nearly half of the not quite 100 top judges in Pakistan lost their jobs in what amounted to a coup against the judiciary, including 13 of the 18 justices on the supreme court.
President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally who was a general in Pakistan’s army until recently, when he gave up his role as military leader to avoid a constitutional conflict, is in the process of restoring rights and plans to hold parliamentary elections next month. However, it appears unlikely that he will restore the dismissed appellate judges to their former posts, according to the Chicago Tribune.
And critics of Musharraf say their successors, handpicked for their expected loyalty to the president, are not able to do the job of an independent judiciary. This, critics contend, is particularly clear from the country’s inability to appoint a panel perceived as independent to investigate the recent assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, “in which,” the Tribune reports, “many Pakistanis accuse the government of complicity or even responsibility.” (As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, al-Qaida is believed by British investigators to be responsible for her murder.)
Despite international protests over the suspension of the country’s constitution (which are detailed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts and this month’s ABA Journal), the elimination of the country’s independent judiciary appears to be more or less a done deal.
The 16-year-old daughter and namesake of the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, spoke with the newspaper, complaining that the family is being treated as if they were “militants, terrorists, extremists,” and expressing a sense of isolation. “I just want to say to the international community, why aren’t they being supportive of the chief justice and the other supreme court judges?” says Palwasha Iftikhar Chaudry. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”
