Pakistani Lawyers Explain Their Outrage

Pakistani lawyers told the New York Times they took to the streets to protest martial law because of their outrage over a military president who first promised reform but then retreated when the Supreme Court displayed judicial independence.

“How do you function as a lawyer when the law is what the general says it is?” a prominent Islamabad lawyer, Babar Sattar, told the Times. He has a Harvard law degree and is one of many Pakistani lawyers educated at the best universities abroad.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who defied Gen. Pervez Musharraf in human rights and other cases, has urged lawyers to defy Musharraf’s state of emergency. “The lawyers should convey my message to the people to rise up and restore the Constitution,” the ousted chief justice told lawyers by speaker phone yesterday.

An estimated 700 lawyers are now in jail for their protests, the newspaper says, though yesterday CNN reported that thousands had been arrested.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has announced her party will wage a mass protest on Friday unless Musharraf changes course and permits elections in January, the New York Times reports in a separate story.

Updated 4:23 p.m. CST 11/07/2007