NYT : Pakistani Judge’s Lawyers Are Confident of Winning His Reinstatement

Pakistani Judge’s Lawyers Are Confident of Winning His Reinstatement

By CARLOTTA GALL | June 16, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 14 — Lawyers representing the suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in Supreme Court hearings said in an interview this week that they were confident that they could win the case and secure his reinstatement by the end of the month.

“On merits, we have a very good case,” Hamid Khan, a Supreme Court advocate and one of the team of lawyers representing Mr. Chaudhry, said. “It should not take more than till the end of the month.”

The chief justice was suspended March 9 after Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, presented him with a number of complaints accusing him of misconduct, including interference in provincial court proceedings and arranging a government position for his son. The justice refused to resign that day despite pressure from heads of Pakistan’s three intelligence agencies, and he has been fighting against the case for his dismissal in the Supreme Court.

After a month of proceedings his lawyers said that on Monday he won the most difficult battle: the right to have his case heard before a full bench of Supreme Court judges, rather than a judicial council of five hand-picked judges, three of whom the lawyers said were pro-government and would have ruled against him.

The lawyers also had confidence in the acting chief justice, Rana Bhagwandas, said Munir Malik, another Supreme Court advocate on the chief justice’s team. “I believe we are making headway,” he said.

Now the judges are hearing the merits of the case, Mr. Khan said. He said the chief justice could win because of what he called the weakness of the charges, and because of the way Mr. Chaudhry was treated on March 9.

The use of force and the presence of the three powerful intelligence chiefs, Mr. Khan said, proved that the president was not only raising issues of misconduct and accountability but also seeking to force the chief justice to resign.

Mr. Chaudhry has said in an affidavit that he was restrained against his will at the president’s office for several hours on March 9, as the country’s three intelligence chiefs tried to force him to resign. He was then kept under house arrest with all communications cut for two days until lawyers mounted demonstrations around the country.

Supporters of the chief justice and opposition politicians have accused General Musharraf of seeking to remove him and replace him with a more pliable judge before elections this fall. General Musharraf is likely to face challenges in the Supreme Court if he tries to stand for another presidential term and keep his post as chief of army staff.

Mr. Khan described the current charges against the chief justice as “quite minor.”

The list of charges leveled by the government includes misuse of office, like charging his family’s gasoline bills to the Supreme Court, demanding grander cars and motorcades and insisting that government guesthouses be at his disposal; intimidating the police and bureaucrats; and showing bias in appointing judges.

If the court dismisses the government’s case, Mr. Chaudhry will automatically be reinstated, Mr. Khan said. There will be no further appeal, because a full bench of the Supreme Court is the highest court of the land, he said.

Wasi Zafar, the law minister, said Sunday that the government was preparing a second set of accusations against Mr. Chaudhry because of his political activity since March, but Mr. Khan dismissed that as an effort to increase the pressure on the chief justice. “I don’t think there is any substance” to another set of charges, he said.

Mr. Chaudhry has toured the country since his dismissal, speaking to huge crowds of lawyers and members of bar associations, but he has kept his speeches to legal topics. Political parties have held rallies alongside his events.

In recent weeks the government has cracked down. Qasim Zia, a member of the legislature in Punjab Province and a member of the Pakistan People’s Party, the country’s main opposition group, said hundreds of opposition party workers had been arrested across Punjab, the country’s most populous province, in the past few weeks.

“Arrests are going on,” Mr. Zia said in a telephone interview from Lahore. “We don’t know why. The authorities have given us no reason. These are unnecessary arrests. There has been no call by us to break the law.”

On Thursday, one of the party’s workers, Sarmad Mansoor, 54, died of a heart attack while in Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore after the authorities ignored complaints of his ill health, the party said in a statement.

Mr. Mansoor, finance secretary of the party in Punjab’s Gujrat District, was arrested on June 6 and was sent to Kot Lakhpat for 90 days, according to the police.

“Mansoor was detained despite his poor health condition,” said Sherry Rehman, the party’s central information secretary. “Repeated requests by his family seeking his release on medical grounds were rejected by the jail authorities and the Punjab government.”

Party leaders demanded an inquiry and action against the jail officials, calling his death a murder.

There was no official reaction from the Punjab government.

Salman Masood contributed reporting.