Pakistani lawyers rally against suspension of top judge

PAKISTAN: Hundreds of Pakistani lawyers rallied in protest against the sudden suspension of the country’s top judge by President Pervez Musharaff, adding they will launch a nationwide court boycott on Monday.

In Karachi, the protesters shouted slogans condemning the removal of chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on misconduct charges as “the murder of the independence of the judiciary in Pakistan.”

The lawyers burned an effigy of Musharraf at a rally outside a judicial complex in the southern port city.

The national organisation of lawyers met in Islamabad Saturday and decided a countrywide boycott of courts on Monday.

“We demand immediate restoration of the chief justice, withdrawal of the case against him,” Pakistan Bar Council vice president Ali Ahmed Kurd said after the meeting.

He described the charges against Chaudhry as “politically motivated.” “There will be a complete boycott of courts throughout the country on Monday and Tuesday will be observed as a black day by the lawyers’ community.”

Protest rallies were also held by lawyers in the southwestern city of Quetta and several cities in the central Punjab province.

Musharraf on Friday sacked Chaudhry on charges of misconduct and misuse of authority, an official statement said.

The president has now referred Chaudhry’s case to Pakistan’s top judicial accountability body.

The sacked chief justice was the subject of a legal petition alleging that he obtained his son a position in the police service despite a lack of proper qualifications.

However he had also been at loggerheads with the government since the supreme court overturned a government deal to sell the country’s state-run steelmaker to a mostly-foreign consortium in June 2006.

Islamabad, Sunday, AFP