Further arrests over murder of top Pakistan judge's aide

PAKISTAN: Two more suspects wanted for the murder of a senior court official with close ties to the country' suspended chief justice were arrested Thursday, police said.

Syed Hamad Raza, a deputy registrar at the Supreme Court and personal assistant to suspended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, was killed by gunmen who broke into his house in Islamabad on May 14.

The 37-year-old's family described the shooting as a targeted assassination and lawyers for Chaudhry have said he was eliminated because of his connections with the chief justice.

Interior minister Aftab Sherpao announced last week that police had arrested four suspects including two brothers, from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. "It was a burglary case," Sherpao had said. "A special police team early Thursday arrested two more accused from Muzaffarabad," a police spokesman said.

"The suspects, also brothers, were presented before senior civil judge, who sent them to judicial lock-up," he said and added that they were under investigation.

Earlier an inteligence officer said Pakistan's chief justice wanted President Pervez Musharraf to dissolve the government and make him head of an interim regime several months before his ouster.

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, whose March 9 suspension by Musharraf sparked a national crisis, also wanted spies to feed him details about other judges, military intelligence director Major General Nadeem Ijaz said in an affidavit.

The sworn statement, one of three filed by senior officials to the Supreme Court on Thursday, is the government's response to Chaudhry's claims that he was intimidated by military ruler Musharraf and other generals.

Ijaz, whose organisation is one of Pakistan's three main spy agencies, said that Chaudhry asked him to come for a meeting several months ago at which he started discussing the internal political situation.

"He was of the view that the president should dissolve the assemblies as they were becoming a nuisance and hold elections under the CJP (Chief Justice of Pakistan)," Ijaz said in the affidavit, a copy of which AFP has seen.

Islamabad, Friday, AFP