Former military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s claim in an interview that the Nawaz Sharif-led government was pressuring courts in cases against him and that former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif came to his rescue has left the government as well as the military in an uncomfortable position. Although the government has out rightly rejected Musharraf’s claims, both legal and political circles have called for the state institutions to come clean on the issue. While government representatives regretted that Gen Musharraf did not realise the implication of his statement, legal experts believed that his statement implied that there was an understanding between him and the state institutions.
Musharraf had made these claims during a talk show he said he was grateful to the former army chief. He had further added, “I have been his boss, and I have been the army chief before him. He helped out because the cases are politicised, they put me on the ECL; they turned it into a political issue.” He also stated that the courts work under pressure behind the scenes and then give decisions. That’s where Army Chief played his role in releasing the pressure that government was putting on the courts. Apart from murder cases of Benazir Bhutto, Nawab Akbar Bugti and Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, the retired general is facing treason charges for imposing emergency rule in November 2007, arresting judges and limiting their powers.
Musharraf had left the country for Dubai in March earlier this year after the interior ministry issued a notification to remove his name from the exit control list (ECL). The government notification followed the Supreme Court’s order to lift the ban on his foreign travel. But the order from the top court had come with the rider that the federal government or the three-judge special court trying the retired general for treason was free to make decisions to regulate his custody or restrict his movement.
