In Smuggled Letter, Pakistan’s Ex-Chief Justice Backs Independent Courts

Pakistan’s former chief justice has released a letter criticizing President Pervez Musharraf for eliminating the country’s independent judiciary.

The letter by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was his second public statement since Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Nov. 3, the New York Times reports.

The document says Chaudhry and his family are being held under house arrest, surrounded by barbed wire fences and denied access to telephones. It was reportedly smuggled out of Chaudhry's home by his 16-year-old daughter.

“There can be no democracy without an independent judiciary, and there can be no independent judge in Pakistan until the action of Nov. 3 is reversed,” the letter read. “Whatever the will of some desperate men, the struggle of the valiant lawyers and civil society of Pakistan will bear fruit. They are not giving up.”