Madam, Mulla, and Musharraf

Much-touted writ of the Musharraf government has become thinner than a toilet paper. Even within a few miles of his office - his seat of power - bamboo-club wielding female seminary students, Talibaat, have been successfully thumbing their noses on him.

First, in January, they occupied a children's library next to their madrassa and refused to vacate it until government dropped its plan to tear down their madrassa that was built on illegally occupied land by its management. They still have the possession.

Then, on Tuesday, these Talibaat along with Taliban from the same madrassa complex descended on the malls and stores throughout the capital and demanded that they stop selling music and movie Cd's. One of the shrewd store owners deflected their wrath to a house in one of the neighborhoods of Islamabad where they claimed an alleged madam was running a brothel. The Talibaat and Taliban raided that house and put rope nooses around the necks of the madam, her daughter, her daughter-in-law and her six-month old granddaughter and dragged them bare-head and bare-foot "like dogs" to their madrassa and presented them to the head of the madrassa, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

Police went to rein in their vigilantism and arrested two teachers and two Talibaat but, in retaliation, two of the police officers along with their police van were reeled in and held hostage by Talibaat. Talibaat and their administrator, A. R, Ghazi threatened to wage Jihad if the two teachers and two Talibaat were not released within hours.

Musharraf government was so hapless that it bowed down to Talibaat demands and started "negotiations" with the management and swapping of police hostages and detained teachers and students was agreed on after hours of back and forth. Talibaat and Ghazi also let the kidnapped women and infant go but only after madam was coerced to read a written statement denouncing her past illicit activities and repenting her evil deeds.

Did Musharraf contrived this capitulation to send an SOS message to the West to convince them of his indispensability and of the fact that the Talibanization had crept even to the capital, Islamabad, and he was the only man standing between this growing danger and the west being eaten alive by these "barbarian jihadis"?

Is he truely on his knees because he has opened too many fronts simultaneously?

Is it a coincidence that four US Congressmen have met with Nawaz Sharif in London on their way to Pakistan where they will meet with Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto is in America?

Is Musharraf on his way out and new horses are being groomed?

Asma Jahangir's Interview with the Newsweek

The Last Word: Asma Jahangir

A Leadership 'Beyond Repair'

April 2, 2007 issue - These are tough times for Pervez Musharraf. Under increasing criticism for his inability to control Islamic militants in the country's tribal areas, the Pakistani president now faces a revolt within his own judicial establishment. For the past two weeks, hundreds of lawyers have staged protests and gone on strike over the president's decision to suspend Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for alleged misuse of his powers. (The charges include nepotism and an excessive fondness for luxury cars and aircraft.) In addition to the demonstrations, eight judges and the deputy attorney general have resigned, raising questions over the future of Pakistan's judiciary—and its leader's grip. NEWSWEEK's Ron Moreau spoke to Asma Jahangir, one of Pakistan's foremost Supreme Court lawyers and chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Excerpts:

MOREAU: What is Musharraf's motive for suspending Chaudhry?
Jahangir: Insecure dictators see ghosts everywhere. This is not the first time it has happened. He forced the Supreme Court justices to swear a loyalty oath to him when he came in [via a bloodless coup in 1999.] He's insecure. Not only does he want a pliant judiciary, he wants a totally subservient one. But it's very difficult in 2007 to have that with today's free media and the independent bar.

Musharraf claims that he is only following procedure—that Chaudhry's suspension is standard reaction to the charges against the chief justice.
The president has tried once again to lie and to mislead everybody. His move is not as casual and simple as he puts it. It was obviously preplanned. He claims that placing Chaudhry under house arrest was a tactical error. Yet for two days this "tactical error" continued.

Chaudhry ordered the government to begin looking into the hundreds of so-called Islamic extremists who had been detained and disappeared. Is this a factor in Musharraf's decision?
Musharraf is a very skillful liar, but now he is losing his touch. He says: "I've been very worried about the missing people, too, but what can I do? They are jihadis." He wants the world to feel that these disappeared people are Islamic militants, which is not true. I would say 60 percent to 70 percent on the list of the 141 disappeared people that we have given to the Supreme Court are Sindhi and Baluch nationalists who are secular. And some of these nationalists are well known in the country. They are poets and writers, and their work is secular. They have no connection to jihad, or Al Qaeda or Taliban. Either he's living in denial or is misled. But I think he is just lying.

But Chaudhry ruled that the government should produce the missing people, didn't he?
As far as the missing people are concerned, Chaudhry has not given a single judgment on it. He kept the Human Rights Commission's petition pending for one and a half months. But since we are lawyers of renown, it is very difficult for any judge to kick us around—he had to hear it. But he went at it very slowly. He did give a notice to the government [to act], but he really didn't give a judgment. There was not a single time when he said that those who kept these people should be brought to justice. All he was doing was saying to the government, "Let's find some people." How can any court close its eye to hundreds of people who have disappeared?

Was Musharraf worried that Chaudhry would rule against his retaining a dual role as president and chief of Army staff later this year?
Whether the president can continue to wear his uniform or not was not an issue. We do not think that any judge has that kind of courage, including Chaudhry. We don't think that these judges have gumption or courage.

The police roughed up Chaudhry as he went to his hearing last week.
You even see the chief justice on television being dragged by the hair. It was all over the newspapers and television. It's a violation of human rights. What frightens people the most is that if they can treat a chief justice so shabbily and humiliate him so shamelessly, then nobody is safe. We all feel that we are next in line.

What will happen if the Supreme Judicial Council exonerates and reinstalls the chief justice?
If the SJC restores [Chaudhry] to the bench I don't know if he can perform independently because lawyers are championing his cause. Would a chief justice who comes back riding on the shoulders of lawyers be able to sit on the bench and not be able to think about the fact that he owes his reinstatement to lawyers?

How do you see this ending?
They [the government] probably feel the longer they prolong the proceedings the greater the chance that the movement will eventually fizzle out. My own assessment is that the situation will become defused because lawyers can't stay on strike and keep protesting for months on end. But this government will make another mistake. This government is beyond repair.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

Firing of Judge Weakens Musharraf

New York Times

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

ISLAMABAD, March 24 — For the past seven years, the Pakistani judiciary has swallowed hard to accommodate the military rule of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, repeatedly bending in matters of law and constitution.

But in the two weeks since the president fired the country’s top judge, whose rulings had begun to challenge the Musharraf government, outraged Pakistani lawyers and others have poured into the streets, setting off an unprecedented outburst of frustration and signaling the most serious challenge that General Musharraf has faced.

American officials who worry about General Musharraf’s longevity focus on whether he is fighting hard enough against Al Qaeda and Taliban militants on the Afghan border. But the latest unrest suggests that his vulnerability may lie more in rising anger over accountability and democracy at home.

“His invincibility has sort of been challenged,” said Talat Masood, a retired general who has been increasingly critical of the Musharraf government. “In a silent way, the people have spoken and said, ‘This cannot continue. This one-man show cannot continue.’ ”

Although the president has come under fire from both right and left, there is little reason to suggest that his rule is in immediate danger. The street demonstrations are still limited. But even officials who say these troubles will soon blow over privately acknowledge that his authority has been notably weakened and that he may have to compromise with some of his political opponents to survive.

General Musharraf’s critics contend that under the Constitution, he has no power to dismiss the chief justice unless he has been found guilty of breaking the law. They believe he ousted the chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, out of fear that the judge would raise questions about what appears to be his ambition to be re-elected president while remaining army chief. General Musharraf’s term as president expires in October.

The legal dispute is principally over the constitutionality of the president holding the office of army chief. In 2003, Parliament gave the general the leeway to hold both offices, but that expires when his term does, in October. The dual role has become a symbol of what Pakistanis describe as the encroachment of the military into their everyday lives.

General Musharraf has not said whether he would remain in uniform, only that he would call elections this year. Regarding the future of the chief justice, he has said that he will abide by the verdict of a high-level judicial panel. He has not made clear why the judge was arrested.

According to leaks published in the Pakistani news media, the chief justice faces charges of impropriety, including pressing for favors for his son. Mr. Chaudhry has denied the allegations.

On Friday, speaking at a National Day ceremony at the main sports stadium here, General Musharraf urged the nation to keep politics out of the inquiry. “Don’t make it a political issue,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “It is a legal issue, and it will be resolved only through legal and constitutional means.”

The United States maintains that it expects General Musharraf, whom it counts as a vital ally in the campaign against terrorism, to abide by his nation’s Constitution. The Commonwealth heads of state, including Britain, have urged him to resolve the uniform issue by the end of his term, calling the current circumstances “incompatible with the basic principles of democracy.”

This week, American officials commended General Musharraf for his efforts in flushing out militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda from the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.

The turmoil over the chief justice’s firing began on March 9, when General Musharraf summoned Mr. Chaudhry to an army office in the garrison town of Rawalpindi and ordered him to resign or face unspecified charges. The tableau was broadcast on television — the general in uniform, the judge in his courtroom attire. It was an image that Pakistanis repeatedly recall as a symbol of the “arrogance” of the military.

“The message I got was this is a frontal assault on the remnants of the independence of the judiciary,” said Munir Malik, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association. “Henceforth, no judge will be safe.”

The judge refused to resign, and things only got worse. Television images showed Mr. Chaudhry being manhandled and stuffed into a police car. Then came protests by lawyers across the country, and images of baton-wielding police beating them with abandon.

During one demonstration last week, riot police officers ravaged the studios of Geo, a private television station that had broadcast news of the protests. General Musharraf swiftly apologized for the conduct of the police and promised they would be punished.

Still, the images stuck. The general’s critics, including onetime members of his government, began to describe the squabble over the chief justice as an example of how army rule had daunted key government institutions. At least seven judges, along with a deputy attorney general, resigned in protest.

“Decent people are not coming forward to say a word in favor of the government,” said Abdul Sattar, who served as foreign minister during the first three years of General Musharraf’s presidency. He said the public outcry after Mr. Chaudhry’s suspension stemmed from accumulated grievances, on everything from corruption in government to the entrenchment of the army in civilian affairs to the “general legitimacy of the government.”

He took pains to say that General Musharraf’s government deserved credit for many things — an improved economy, for one — but added that those achievements had been overshadowed by the gradual erosion of independent government institutions. He called the firing of Mr. Chaudhry “the last straw.”

Shamshad Ahmad, who served in General Musharraf’s government as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, warned of “despair and disillusionment” among Pakistanis, in a stinging opinion piece in the conservative newspaper Nation on Saturday. “Either the president is totally cut off from the world of reality or he has deliberately chosen to close his eyes,” he wrote.

The president’s supporters, most of whom are unwilling to speak openly, predict that the uproar over the judge will soon subside. “The issue will fade out,” said one Western diplomat. “However this plays out, Musharraf comes out weaker than he has been, but not as weak as for his government to collapse.”

Whether the agitation against General Musharraf’s actions will be sustained is unclear. Nor does anyone know how the Supreme Judicial Council will rule on Mr. Chaudhry’s case, which is due to begin hearings on April 3. But neither his restoration nor his permanent ouster will ultimately help the president, Najam Sethi, the editor of the Friday Times, wrote last week. If the panel endorses the president’s move, it will be seen as “a puppet of the military,” whereas if it restores the chief justice, Mr. Chaudhry would likely “become a rigid obstacle in General Musharraf’s path.”

“In the long run, it is a no-win situation unless the general is prepared to share power and abide by the Constitution,” he wrote.

Mr. Chaudhry, for his part, supported General Musharraf’s coup in 1999. He was not among the judges who were purged from the judiciary in 2000 when they refused to accept a provisional constitution drafted by his government. He did not challenge a constitutional amendment that came three years later and allowed General Musharraf to simultaneously retain the posts of army chief and president. “The judiciary has always been the B-team of the army,” conceded Mr. Malik, the president of the bar association. “It has collaborated with all martial regimes.”

That began to change as Mr. Chaudhry began to scrutinize the government in uncomfortable ways in recent months, including by raising questions about “forced disappearances,” in which Pakistanis had been held by intelligence agencies without due process. Then he refused the general’s invitation to resign.

Ayesha Siddiqa, a strategic analyst who is writing a book on the Pakistani military, said the defiance served as an inevitable trigger of public opinion against the general. “Chaudhry is very symbolic of the overall frustration,” she said. “There was discontent mounting against him.”

The Housewife Who is Tougher Than The General

The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Gen. Pervez Musharraf is facing angry street demonstrations around the country in the most serious crisis of his presidency — and that’s partly because he picked a fight with a middle-class housewife who is proving tougher and shrewder than he is.

This drama is playing out in extraordinary scenes on Pakistani streets: crowds of roly-poly lawyers in dark suits braving clouds of tear gas to demand that Mr. Musharraf resign — or even be tried for treason. It’s impossible to know whether the protests will lead to a democratic revolution that topples Mr. Musharraf, to a military crackdown, or to a political deal that causes the protests to fizzle.

And behind it all is the saga of the general and the housewife.

“The nation is ready to rise up; there is a revolution behind me,” says Amina Masood Janjua, a mother of three who has emerged as a nemesis of General Musharraf. Mrs. Janjua says she was a “very timid person,” uninvolved in politics and content to be “queen of my house.” But then two years ago, her husband disappeared, presumably kidnapped by government security agents.

The government has regularly “disappeared” people it doesn’t like, apparently keeping them in secret detention centers to be tortured and interrogated for months or years. Human rights groups count at least 400 such disappearances since 2002, when Mr. Musharraf began using the war on terror as cover to eliminate troublesome nationalists, religious activists and human rights organizers.

Mrs. Janjua’s husband, Masood Janjua, may have been picked up because of ties to a Muslim organization, but there is no indication he had broken any law. Mrs. Janjua says her family received a phone call from Mr. Musharraf’s military secretary last year promising that her husband would be freed soon. But nothing happened, and officially the government knows nothing of his whereabouts.

Terrified that her husband was being tortured, Mrs. Janjua began organizing other family members of the disappeared. They held a public demonstration — but the police attacked the group and beat and publicly stripped Mrs. Janjua’s 17-year-old son. As the police dragged him off, Mrs. Janjua’s 11-year-old daughter screamed: “You’ve taken my father; don’t take my brother!” He was freed that evening. The aim of the assault presumably was to warn Mrs. Janjua to be quiet — just as relatives of other missing people have been warned that their loved ones will be harmed if they protest or speak to the press.

One of the missing is Safdar Sarki, a Pakistani-American doctor and American citizen seized a year ago while campaigning for the rights of people in Sindh Province.

“I was crying today; I was thinking of him,” his wife, Rukhsana, said by phone from California. Her voice breaking, she promised that if Pakistan would just release her husband, she would make him stop fighting for human rights. She added: “My sons are asking every day, ‘Where is Papa? Where is Papa? ...’ ”

Likewise: Where is the U.S.? The Bush administration has stuck more solidly with Mr. Musharraf (“a solid friend” is the current State Department formulation) than with its principles. President Bush needs to make clear that the U.S. sides with Pakistan’s democratic future, not its autocratic past.

That future is being shaped by Mrs. Janjua, who sued the government over the disappearances. To everyone’s astonishment, the Pakistani Supreme Court took up the case and ordered the government to account for those who are missing.

Perhaps partly as a result — and also to prevent the Supreme Court from complicating his election-fixing plans — Mr. Musharraf this month suspended the chief justice of the Supreme Court. That’s what has set off nationwide outrage and protests.

Ordinary Pakistanis seem increasingly fed up with the president’s lies and thuggery. Mr. Musharraf’s contributions to Pakistan are enormous — he rescued Pakistan’s economy, fostered 7 percent growth rates, promoted education and nurtured an expanding middle class. But those same accomplishments are now raising aspirations for genuine democracy rather than the sham he offers.

The risk is that a replacement would be worse: Pakistan has been one of the world’s worst-ruled nations over the last 50 years, and Mr. Musharraf is better than his predecessors. But if the Pakistani public demands better government, that is ultimately a bullish sign for Pakistan and a useful warning to other autocrats.

And maybe the movement will bring Mrs. Janjua and Mrs. Sarki their husbands home again.

An Immigrant's Journey From Md. to Gitmo

An Immigrant's Journey From Md. to Gitmo

The Road From the Suburbs To Gitmo
A family disagrees with the U.S. view of the radicalization of Majid Khan.

The Associated Press


BALTIMORE - Majid Khan worked the cash register at his dad's gas stations, listened to rap music and went to public high school like many recent American immigrants. Yet, at a red brick mosque wedged between a busy highway and middle-class cul-de-sacs, the U.S. government says, he found his way to an extreme brand of Islam.

Two trips to Pakistan to marry and visit his new wife allegedly led him to a fellow English-speaker, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Together, the government says, they plotted to blow up American gas stations, poison U.S. reservoirs and kill the president of Pakistan.

The 26-year-old Khan is now jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the only U.S. resident among 14 detainees the government considers its most dangerous.

U.S. officials see his journey from suburbia to prison as a worrisome example of the radicalization of young Muslim men, but also as a victory in the nation's war on terror. His family sees it as a horrible mistake. To them, he remains a fun-loving son and sibling, gifted with computers and a one-time volunteer at the local mosque.

In September, President Bush confirmed that the CIA had been holding Khan at secret detention facilities as he was transferred to Guantanamo along with others to await prosecution under the new military tribunal system. According to a recently released transcript from a hearing at the prison, Khan's mentor, Mohammed, confessed to 31 plots, including at least one involving Khan.

Majid "is the most fun person that we had here," said Mahmood Khan, his brother, during an hourlong interview at the family's dining room table. "Allegations like that are the total opposite side of the Majid we know."

Many details of how Khan ended up on a list of elite terror suspects, including how the government says he found extremism in Baltimore, have not previously come to light.

A RADICAL PATH

Top national security officials say they're finding and charging more young men - from California to Ohio - with crimes such as providing aid to al-Qaida.

Philip Mudd, deputy chief of the FBI's National Security Branch, said the government has learned more about how radicalization works. A significant step occurs when a potential recruit who is talking about jihad takes even a small action, like training during a camping trip, he said.

"It is an action that cements you down a certain path," Mudd said.

The path for Majid Khan was described in government documents and by half a dozen U.S. federal officials. None would be quoted by name because Khan hasn't been formally charged.

They said that in 1996, Khan joined other members of his family who immigrated from Pakistan and settled in a modest 1970s Baltimore subdivision. Khan was granted asylum status, but never obtained citizenship.

For prayers, the local mosque was about a mile away. For school, Majid took a bus to attend Owings Mills High's program for non-English speakers, graduating in 1999.

By the government's account, along with exposure to American culture, Khan also found a radical version of Islam. A change came sometime before Sept. 11, 2001, when Khan was working as a database administrator.

He volunteered at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, teaching computer classes. Court papers filed by Khan's lawyers say the society - a pillar in Baltimore's Muslim community - is the only Islamic organization in which Khan participated in the United States.

Khan caught the attention of a radicalized fringe element that took advantage of the society as a forum to organize a small prayer group. One official stressed that radical presence in Baltimore's I-95 corridor was small. But it was enough to provide entree to al-Qaida.

Abid Husain, an Islamic society board member, recalls little of Khan. He remembers his face and the programming classes that he said Khan led for just a couple of months. "It never crossed our mind that he would end up like this," Husain said.

He also said he was unaware of any radical presence at the mosque. "Hopefully, they are not around here any more," he said.

By 2002, Khan and one of his older brothers went to Pakistan when Khan's family arranged for him to wed.

The trip also connected Khan to his cousin and uncle, who were both members of al-Qaida. They introduced Khan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaida's most prolific plotter whom intelligence officials refer to as KSM.

Like Khan, KSM was a Pakistani and spoke English. He had attended school in the United States at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.

In Pakistan, the government says, KSM asked Khan for help and Khan obliged. In the fall of 2002, KSM asked him to deliver $50,000 to an al-Qaida affiliate in Thailand. In a press conference last year, Bush said that Khan confirmed the details during interrogation and provided information that led to the 2003 capture of another operative, named Zubair.

Khan also is said to have helped pick possible operatives, including Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who is now serving 20 years in prison for supporting terrorism. Faris was studying how to destroy New York City suspension bridges.

Khan had his own role in planning attacks, officials say. U.S. intelligence thinks he got training in timed detonators with a goal of blowing up gas stations. He researched how to poison water reservoirs. And KSM considered Khan for an operation to kill Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

ARREST AND DETENTION

In their most extensive comments to date, Khan's family and his lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights tell a much different story.

Mahmood Khan, his oldest brother, says Majid was like many high school kids: He got good grades. He wanted to be a rapper. And he used his cricket skills to excel at baseball.

After high school, Mahmood said his brother earned a database software certification that landed him the best job in the family, which paid $70,000 a year.

The steady 40-hour-a-week job meant that Majid could devote a couple of hours a day to the mosque. Mahmood recalls his brother's computer classes and how he would help direct traffic for Friday prayers.

Mahmood said several family members went to Pakistan for Majid's February 2002 wedding to Rabia Yaqoob. He said his brother returned to the United States shortly afterward to make money, but rejoined his wife later that year.

Within days of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's March 2003 capture, Pakistani security agents raided the flat where Majid was staying in Karachi. Majid, his brother Mohammed, his brother's wife and their infant daughter were taken into custody.

In recent telephone interviews from southern Pakistan, Rabia said she was at her parents' house that night, but she's been told of the midnight intrusion - the soldiers in uniform and other men in plain clothes. Everyone but her husband was released after about a month.

With the rest of the family, Rabia searched for information about her husband's whereabouts. She heard from Majid for the first time when the Red Cross delivered a series of letters, censored by the U.S. "We will meet in the heaven if we could not meet in this world," he wrote in one received in early January.

Rabia said her husband is innocent and she knows nothing about any links with al-Qaida. Their 3-year-old daughter has never met her father. "My family hates Americans - mainly because of Majid Khan's arrest," she said.

Mahmood disavows that sentiment, but voices another painful regret - the Islamic society's decision to distance itself from his brother. "When Majid needed their help, no one came forward," he said.

It's still not clear where Khan was held for three years. Wherever he was, Mahmood and Majid's alawyers say he was subjected to torture and coerced into making false statements. The CIA denies it uses torture.

UNCERTAIN STATUS

What's ahead for Khan is unclear.

Pakistan has never publicly acknowledged a role in his detention. But two Pakistani intelligence officials said Khan was caught by the Pakistani spy agency after it received a tip from its U.S. counterparts that Khan was linked to KSM.

This month, the U.S. military has been reviewing the status of KSM, Khan and 12 other high-value detainees held at Guantanamo. Prosecutors hope to begin trials under Congress' newly approved military tribunal system as soon as this summer.

Khan's lawyers have petitioned - unsuccessfully so far - to have his case tried in civilian court in the United States. A federal appeals court ruled last month that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment. That question is likely to end up before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Khans are trying to maintain a normal American existence. Last year, Majid's dad, Ali Shoukat Khan, retired and for a time turned his gas station over to Mahmood.

Mahmood renamed it "All American Motors."

Associated Press Writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad and Zarar Khan in Karachi, and news researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

Another Guantanamo

A Growing Afghan Prison Rivals Bleak Guantánamo

February 26, 2006

A Growing Afghan Prison Rivals Bleak Guantánamo

By TIM GOLDEN and ERIC SCHMITT

While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.

Pentagon officials have often described the detention site at Bagram, a cavernous former machine shop on an American air base 40 miles north of Kabul, as a screening center. They said most of the detainees were Afghans who might eventually be released under an amnesty program or transferred to an Afghan prison that is to be built with American aid.

But some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as two or three years. And unlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

Privately, some administration officials acknowledge that the situation at Bagram has increasingly come to resemble the legal void that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 affirming the right of prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in United States courts.

While Guantánamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance.

From the accounts of former detainees, military officials and soldiers who served there, a picture emerges of a place that is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its counterpart in Cuba. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, the detainees and military sources said, sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.

"Bagram was never meant to be a long-term facility, and now it's a long-term facility without the money or resources," said one Defense Department official who has toured the detention center. Comparing the prison with Guantánamo, the official added, "Anyone who has been to Bagram would tell you it's worse."

Former detainees said the renovations had improved conditions somewhat, and human rights groups said reports of abuse had steadily declined there since 2003. Nonetheless, the Pentagon's chief adviser on detainee issues, Charles D. Stimson, declined to be interviewed on Bagram, as did senior detention officials at the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in Afghanistan.

The military's chief spokesman in Afghanistan, Col. James R. Yonts, also refused to discuss detainee conditions, other than to say repeatedly that his command was "committed to treating detainees humanely, and providing the best possible living conditions and medical care in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention."

Other military and administration officials said the growing detainee population at Bagram, which rose from about 100 prisoners at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year, according to military figures, was in part a result of a Bush administration decision to shut off the flow of detainees into Guantánamo after the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights. The question of whether those same rights apply to detainees in Bagram has not been tested in court.

Until the court ruling, Bagram functioned as a central clearing house for the global fight against terror. Military and intelligence personnel there sifted through captured Afghan rebels and suspected terrorists seized in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, sending the most valuable and dangerous to Guantánamo for extensive interrogation, and generally releasing the rest.

But according to interviews with current and former administration officials, the National Security Council effectively halted the movement of new detainees into Guantánamo at a cabinet-level meeting at the White House on Sept. 14, 2004.

Wary of further angering Guantánamo's critics, the council authorized a final shipment of 10 detainees eight days later from Bagram, the officials said. But it also indicated that it wanted to review and approve any Defense Department proposals for further transfers. Despite repeated requests from military officials in Afghanistan and one formal recommendation by a Pentagon working group, no such proposals have been considered, officials said.

"Guantánamo was a lightning rod," said a former senior administration official who participated in the discussions and who, like many of those interviewed, would discuss the matter in detail only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding it. "For some reason, people did not have a problem with Bagram. It was in Afghanistan."

Yet Bagram's expansion, which was largely fueled by growing numbers of detainees seized on the battlefield and a bureaucratic backlog in releasing many of the Afghan prisoners, also underscores the Bush administration's continuing inability to resolve where and how it will hold more valuable terror suspects.

Military officials with access to intelligence reporting on the subject said about 40 of Bagram's prisoners were Pakistanis, Arabs and other foreigners; some were previously held by the C.I.A. in secret interrogation centers in Afghanistan and other countries. Officials said the intelligence agency had been reluctant to send some of those prisoners on to Guantánamo because of the possibility that their C.I.A. custody could eventually be scrutinized in court.

Defense Department officials said the C.I.A.'s effort to unload some detainees from its so-called black sites had provoked tension among some officials at the Pentagon, who have frequently objected to taking responsibility for terror suspects cast off by the intelligence agency. The Defense Department "doesn't want to be the dumping ground," one senior official familiar with the interagency debates said. "There just aren't any good options."

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment.

Conditions at Bagram

The rising number of detainees at Bagram has been noted periodically by the military and documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which does not make public other aspects of its findings. But because the military does not identify the prisoners or release other information on their detention, it had not previously been clear that some detainees were being held there for such long periods.

The prison rolls would be even higher, officials noted, were it not for a Pentagon decision in early 2005 to delegate the authority to release them from the deputy secretary of defense to the military's Central Command, which oversees the 19,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and to the ground commander there.

Since January 2005, military commanders in Afghanistan have released about 350 detainees from Bagram in conjunction with an Afghan national reconciliation program, officials said. Even so, one Pentagon official said the current average stay of prisoners at Bagram was 14.5 months.

Officials said most of the current Bagram detainees were captured during American military operations in Afghanistan, primarily in the country's restive south, beginning in the spring of 2004.

"We ran a couple of large-scale operations in the spring of 2004, during which we captured a large number of enemy combatants," said Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson, who was the ground commander for American troops in Afghanistan at the time. In subsequent remarks he added, "Our system for releasing detainees whose intelligence value turned out to be negligible did not keep pace with the numbers we were bringing in."

General Olson and other military officials said the growth at Bagram had also been a consequence of the closing of a smaller detention center at Kandahar and efforts by the military around the same time to move detainees more quickly out of "forward operating bases," in the Afghan provinces, where international human rights groups had cited widespread abuses.

At Bagram, reports of abuses have markedly declined since the violent deaths of two Afghan men held there in December 2002, Afghan and foreign human rights officials said.

After an Army investigation, the practices found to have caused those two deaths — the chaining of detainees by the arms to the ceilings of their cells and the use of knee strikes to the legs of disobedient prisoners by guards — were halted by early 2003. Other abusive methods, like the use of barking attack dogs to frighten new prisoners and the handcuffing of detainees to cell doors to punish them for talking, were phased out more gradually, military officials and former detainees said.

Human rights officials and former detainees said living conditions at the detention center had also improved.

Faced with serious overcrowding in 2004, the military initially built some temporary prison quarters and began refurbishing the main prison building at Bagram, a former aircraft-machine shop built by Soviet troops during their occupation of the country in the 1980's.

Corrals surrounded by stacked razor wire that had served as general-population cells gave way to less-forbidding wire pens that generally hold no more than 15 detainees, military officials said. The cut-off metal drums used as toilets were eventually replaced with flush toilets.

Last March, a nine-bed infirmary opened, and months later a new wing was built. The expansion brought improved conditions for the more than 250 prisoners who have been housed there, officials said.

Still, even the Afghan villagers released from Bagram over the past year tend to describe it as a stark, forsaken place.

"It was like a cage," said one former detainee, Hajji Lalai Mama, a 60-year-old tribal elder from the Spinbaldak district of southern Afghanistan who was released last June after nearly two years. Referring to a zoo in Pakistan, he added, "Like the cages in Karachi where they put animals: it was like that."

Guantánamo, which once kept detainees in wire-mesh cages, now houses them in an elaborate complex of concrete and steel buildings with a hospital, recreation yards and isolation areas. At Bagram, detainees are stripped on arrival and given orange uniforms to wear. They wash in collective showers and live under bright indoor lighting that is dimmed for only a few hours at night.

Abdul Nabi, a 24-year-old mechanic released on Dec. 15 after nine months, said some detainees frequently protested the conditions, banging on their cages and sometimes refusing to eat. He added that infractions of the rules were dealt with unsparingly: hours handcuffed in a smaller cell for minor offenses, and days in isolation for repeated transgressions.

"We were not allowed to talk very much," he said in an interview.

The Rights of Detainees

The most basic complaint of those released was that they had been wrongly detained in the first place. In many cases, former prisoners said they had been denounced by village enemies or arrested by the local police after demanding bribes they could not pay.

Human rights lawyers generally contend that the Supreme Court decision on Guantánamo, in the case of Rasul v. Bush, could also apply to detainees at Bagram. But lawyers working on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees have been reluctant to take cases from Bagram while the reach of the Supreme Court ruling, which is now the subject of further litigation, remains uncertain.

As at Guantánamo, the military has instituted procedures at Bagram intended to ensure that the detainees are in fact enemy combatants. Yet the review boards at Bagram give fewer rights to the prisoners than those used in Cuba, which have been criticized by human rights officials as kangaroo courts.

The two sets of panels that review the status of detainees at Guantánamo assign military advocates to work with detainees in preparing cases. Detainees are allowed to hear and respond to the allegations against them, call witnesses and request evidence. Only a small fraction of the hundreds of panels have concluded that the accused should be released.

The Bagram panels, called Enemy Combatant Review Boards, offer no such guarantees. Reviews are conducted after 90 days and at least annually thereafter, but detainees are not informed of the accusations against them, have no advocate and cannot appear before the board, officials said. "The detainee is not involved at all," one official familiar with the process said.

An official of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Shamsullah Ahmadzai, noted that the Afghan police, prosecutors and the courts were all limited by law in how long they could hold criminal suspects.

"The Americans are detaining people without any legal procedures," Mr. Ahmadzai said in an interview in Kabul. "Prisoners do not have the opportunity to demonstrate their innocence."

Under a diplomatic arrangement reached last year after more than a year of negotiations, Afghan officials have agreed to take over custody of the roughly 450 Afghan detainees now at Bagram and another 100 Afghans held at Guantánamo once American-financed contractors refurbish a block of a decrepit former Soviet jail near Kabul as a high-security prison.

Because of the $10 million prison- construction project and an accompanying American program to train Afghan prison guards, both of which are to be completed in about a year, military officials in the region have abandoned any thought of sending any of the Afghan detainees at Bagram to Guantánamo. Still, many details of the deal remain uncertain, including when the new prison will be completed, which Afghan ministry will run it and how the detainees may be prosecuted in Afghan courts.

Pentagon officials said some part of the Bagram prison would probably continue to operate, holding the roughly 40 non-Afghan detainees there as well as others likely to be captured by American or NATO forces in continuing operations.

Prisoner Transfers Stalled

Until now, military officials at both Bagram and Guantánamo have been frustrated in their efforts to engineer the transfer to Cuba of another group of the most dangerous and valuable non-Afghan detainees held at Bagram, Pentagon officials said.

Three officials said commanders at Bagram first proposed moving about a dozen detainees to Guantánamo in late 2004 and then reiterated the request in early 2005. In an unusual step last spring, the officials added, intelligence specialists based at Guantánamo traveled to Bagram to assess the need for the transfer.

But as Central Command officials were forwarding a formal request to the Pentagon for the transfer of about a dozen high-level detainees, at least one of them, Omar al-Faruq, a former operative of Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia, escaped from the Bagram prison with three other men. Mr. Faruq had first been taken to Bagram by C.I.A. operatives in late summer 2002, but was removed from the prison about a month later, a soldier who served there said.

Two officials familiar with intelligence reports on the escape said that last July, after Mr. Faruq had been returned to Bagram by the C.I.A., he and the other men slipped out of a poorly fenced-in cell and, in the middle of the night, piled up some boxes and climbed through an open transom over one of the doors.

In August, weeks after the escape, a Defense Department working group called the Detainee Assistance Team endorsed the Central Command's recommendation for the transfer of nine Bagram detainees to Guantánamo, two officials familiar with the matter said.

Since then, the recommendation has languished in the Pentagon bureaucracy. Officials said it had apparently been stalled by aides who had declined to forward it to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld out of concern that any new transfers to Guantánamo would stoke international criticism.

"Out of sight, out of mind," one of those officials said of the Bagram detainees.

US Military Commissions Threaten To Whitewash Detainee Abuse

Amnesty International Date: 23 March 2007 USA

Military commissions, like CSRTs, threaten to whitewash detainee abuse

In the "war on terror", detainees in US custody have been treated as potential sources of information first and criminal suspects a distant second. However, this secondary aspect is now coming into focus. Plucked from years of secret or virtually incommunicado detention, a few people held in the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba are facing trial by military commission.

These trials cannot be divorced from the backdrop against which such proceedings would occur. The hallmarks of the USA’s "war on terror" detention regime – secret detention, prolonged incommunicado detention, and indefinite detention without charge – per se violate international law and are inherently coercive. Detainees have been subjected to repeated interrogations without access to lawyers or the courts. Interrogation techniques and detention conditions amounting to torture or other ill-treatment under international law have been authorized and used.

The military commissions are effectively tailored to fit the unlawful practices that have preceded them. Information coerced by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment will be admissible. At the same time, the government may introduce evidence while keeping secret the methods used to obtain it.

To this extent, the military commission system mirrors the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), set up to review Guantánamo detentions in mid-2004, more than two years after detentions began at the base. The CSRTs consist of panels of three military officers who can rely on secret or coerced evidence in affirming or rejecting a detainee’s "unlawful enemy combatant" status. The burden is on the detainee, without legal representation and generally denied the possibility of obtaining witnesses or evidence, to disprove his "enemy combatant" status.

A recent study of CSRT records found that more than 14 per cent of detainees asked to see the classified evidence against them. All such requests were denied. In more than half of the cases where a detainee asked to call a witness for his CSRT hearing, the witness sought was an individual who was not a fellow detainee held at Guantánamo. All such requests for a witness from outside the base were denied. On the question of coerced evidence, the study found that:

"No Tribunal considered the extent to which any hearsay evidence was obtained through coercion…[T]he Tribunal usually makes note of allegations of torture, and refers them to the convening authority. This is less surprising than the fact that several Tribunals found a detainee to be an enemy combatant before receiving any results from such an investigation. While there is no way to ascertain the extent, if any, that witness statements might have been affected by coercion, fully 18% of the detainees alleged torture; in each case, the detainee volunteered the information rather than being asked by the Tribunal.... In each case, the panel proceeded to decide the case before any investigation was undertaken".

A CSRT finding of "unlawful enemy combatant" status makes the detainee eligible for trial by military commission. As well as having this "enemy combatant" label attached to them, detainees have also had their right to be presumed innocent systematically undermined by a pattern of prejudicial commentary. "Killers", "terrorists", and "bad people" are among the labels that have been applied to them by senior officials, including the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the President.

President Bush issued an executive order on 14 February 2007 establishing military commissions under the Military Commissions Act (MCA), legislation largely drafted by officials of his administration and passed by Congress last September in the charged atmosphere of congressional elections and the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the military commissions convened under this discriminatory legislation will lack the independence necessary to confront internationally unlawful activities that have been conducted under the authority of the President.

Ten detainees were charged for trial under the previous military commission system, established under a November 2001 presidential order, but held to be unlawful by the US Supreme Court in the landmark Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling in June last year. Those 10 individuals are likely to be the first to face trial under the revised commissions.

In addition, 14 "high-value" detainees were transferred to Guantánamo in early September 2006 from years of secret CIA detention for the stated purpose of trial by military commission. These 14 detainees were subjected to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law. Where they had been held, and how they had been treated, remains classified as "top secret".

Their detentions are currently being reviewed by CSRTs in closed session because, according to the Pentagon, the 14 "might divulge highly classified information" about the CIA secret detention program. This presumably would be the same at their trials, at which the military judge can close proceedings to prevent disclosure of classified intelligence activities.

If this happened beyond the perimeters of the Guantánamo base, it would likely feature in the US State Department’s annual reports on human rights violations in other countries. The most recent entry on Cuba, for example, noted that the courts there "often failed to observe due process rights nominally available to defendants. While most trials were ostensibly public, trials were closed when there were alleged violations of state security."

Six months after their transfer to Guantánamo, the 14 so-called "high-value" detainees are still being denied access to lawyers even as the government builds its case against them. In addition, as a part of the CSRT process, the government has been releasing details of their alleged confessions to involvement in serious crimes. At the same time, it has censored from public view allegations of torture made by at least one of the detainees.

Amnesty International believes that in at least some cases, perhaps a majority of the 24 cases of detainees of 14 nationalities currently identified as potential defendants, the military commissions lack the competence – in the sense of having the jurisdiction under international law and standards – to conduct trials at all.

Civilians arrested outside of zones of armed conflict – as many Guantánamo detainees were, including the 14 transferred there in September – should not be tried by military tribunals of any kind. In similar vein, criminal offences should not be categorized as war crimes if they did not occur in an armed conflict. Simply labelling the context as a "war" does not justify bypassing civilian jurisdiction.

The military commissions will operate in something approaching a legal vacuum. Under the MCA, defendants cannot turn to international human rights law, the Geneva Conventions or the US Constitution for protection. The military commissions are part of a universe absent of judicial remedy for detainees and their families.

Exoneration will not necessarily end a detainee’s ordeal. Even if a detainee is acquitted, he may be returned to indefinite detention as an "enemy combatant". In such circumstances, and with the right to habeas corpus already foreclosed, the right to trial within a reasonable time – guaranteed in international and US law, but not under the MCA – is rendered meaningless by a detention regime that has already kept the detainees in legal limbo for years.

The pervasive unlawfulness that has marked the past five years of detentions cries out for remedy and for full and fair trials. Yet these military commissions threaten to add a new layer of human rights violations by cutting corners in pursuit of a few convictions. In so doing, they would add to the injustice that the Guantánamo detention facility has come to symbolize.

On 7 March 2007, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged that "Guantánamo has become symbolic, whether we like it or not, for many around the world". It since been reported that in his first weeks after taking over from Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary Gates argued that the detention facility should be shut down as quickly as possible, and that any trials of detainees held there should be moved to the US mainland.

Amnesty International agrees. It is calling on the US government to abandon the military commissions and to bring any Guantánamo or other "war on terror" detainees it charges to trial in the ordinary federal courts, without recourse to the death penalty. The Guantánamo detention facility should be closed down.

FBI Could Lose Power for Abusing it

The New York Times , The Guardian and Washington Post Editorial

Republicans and Democrats both sternly warned the FBI today that it risks losing its broad power to collect telephone, e-mail and financial records to hunt terrorists because of its rampant abuses of the authority.

The warning came in the wake of Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, chief watchdog of the department, telling the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority to issue national security letters, which resulted in illegally collecting data from Americans and foreigners. He had revealed FBI abuses of power in his 130-page report last week.

"you probably won't have NSL authority", Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif. told FBI if it does not correct its practices. Another Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Wis. called the abuses "a gross overreach" and said, "I hope that this would be a lesson to the FBI that they can't get away with this and expect to maintain public support for the tools that they need to combat terrorism".

Fine called the problems inexcusable, serious and unacceptable and "the product of mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance, and lack of adequate oversight".

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., called the abuses part of a disturbing pattern of misconduct at the Justice Department and "a serious breach of trust" because it "converted this tool into a handy shortcut to illegally gather vast amounts of private information while at the same time significantly underreporting its activities to Congress."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., asked Congress to revise the USA Patriot Act. He said, "We do not trust government always to be run by angels, especially not this administration".

Even the FBI general counsel admitted the problems were "a colossal failure on our part."

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. said, "From the attorney general on down, you should be ashamed of yourself. We stretched to try to give you the tools necessary to make America safe, and it is very, very clear that you've abused that trust."

In his review, authorized by Congress over Bush administration objections, of headquarters files and just four of the FBI's 56 field offices, Fine found 48 violations of law or presidential directives from 2003 through 2005, including failure to get proper authorization, making improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records. Fine also found that the number of national security letters requested by the FBI skyrocketed after the Patriot Act became law.

For Fine "the most troubling aspect of this" were more than 700 cases in which FBI agents obtained telephone records through "exigent letters" which asserted that grand jury subpoenas had been requested for the data, when in fact such subpoenas never been sought.

Phantoms From My Future

When one of them flashed his FBI badge from accross the front desk counter and said that they had come to ask a few questions I was not amused but I tried to smile. For some strange reason I was not afraid. The one who showed his badge was taller, leaner with dark hair but looked younger. The other, the blond, just stared at me as if he was trying to read my reactions, body languagey, so he could connect his mental dots.

I came out and invited them to the lounge of my hotel and we sat around a table. At that point the second one also showed me his badge.

It was a little after nine the front desk manager came to our office and told me that there were two gentlemen at the desk who said they wanted to talk to me about some 'personal business'. I thought it must be some sales people. It turned out it was different kind of pitch.

One who had taken the lead sat down facing me accross the table. The second took his seat to my left.

They did not tell me their names. At the tail end of our meeting when I asked for their business cards both made flimsy excuses not to give me one but wrote their names on a piece of paper torn from the writing pad on which one was taking notes. The taller dark haired one was Jason Schactner and the other Peter Langrish. Jason also gave his cell phone number.

Jason took the lead as before and satrted telling me that last year I had gone to Pakistan and had declared at the airport that I was taking 19,000 dollars with me. Then went to Dubai in May and came back in July (he did not remember what he had read from his notes and was not sure when I came back) and declared at JFK airport that I was bringing 'rather a large amount of money' but had not done so when left USA. Where did I get the money from and what I did with 19000 dollars. He also mentioned my 2001 'interview' with FBI agent, Mark Johnston, in New Jersey and gave some vague details from that earlier encounter.

That was his way of telling me that they knew all about me.

I told them that last year when I went to Pakistan it was to have my son married. The marriage date was March 12. The money was for marriage expenses. In May, I had a cashier check made out from my bank for 'rather a large amount' and took it with me to Dubai where I intended to establish business but could not open an account in Dubai banks because I did not have a resident visa which was required to open an account. By the time I got my visa I was so disappointed with the superficial and discriminatory way of life and economy there that I decided to give up my dream of doing business there and brought the cashier check back with me and deposited back in the bank.

I did not declare this check to the authroities because it was not cash but had to declare it when my wallet and bags were searched at the JFK airport and the agent asked me if I wanted to declare it.

Jason asked me if I had some other business too, besides hotel business, because I have a lot of money.

I told him that I had a home equiry line of credit on my house in New Jersy with which I bought this hotel in partnership with two other persons. Later I bought a house in this town with what was left over from the sale of my house in NJ after paying the line of credit. But I had to borrow some money from my brother to pay off my house.

Last year when I was in Pakistan my brother started asking me, through my father, to return his loan. But I did not have any money so I told my father that I will go back to America and would sell my house and pay back my brother.

Later on, my father told me that my brother will give me some more money to buy half of my share in business. I told him it will not be possible to do on papers but I will pay him half of my profits every year as long as I am using his money. I got some more money from my brother. This was the money I had made the cashier check from.

Then he said he will read some names from a list and I tell him if I knew any one of them. He rattled off some Muslim names. First four and last three I did not recognize at all but I told him I knew Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

I told him I had recently gotten interested and involved in the issue of human rights of the missing Pakistanis who had been abducted by Pakistani government's intelligence agencies. To find out how I could help I had found the phone number of the Pak Tribune, an internet news outlet from Islamabad, that was covering news about disappeared Pakistanis. I called their office and asked for Mrs. Amina Masood Janjua's phone number. I was given the phone number for Defense of Human Rights for which she worked. When I called that number it was Abdul Rashid Ghazi who I spoke with and asked for a list of Pakistanis who had gone missing. Then I received an email from him thanking me for my interest in the issue of human rights violations. I exchanged a few emails with him until Amina Janjua and Khalid Khawaja were made point persons to keep in contact with me regarding the missing Pakistanis.

I have also been in contact with Amina Masood Janjua whose husband had been abducted by Pakistani secret services in July, 2005. And I also spoke and exchanged emails with Khalid Khawaja who is now in prison but was initially abducted at dawn when he was on his way to Masjid for Fajr prayers.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi is owner, I think, of a madrassah in Islamabad but also works with Defense of Human Rights. His madrassah was destroyed by Pakistani government and the female students of the madrassah occupied a library next to it. He said he knew about the whole madrassah matter - from papers.

I told him I was a product of madrassah myself and had memorized the Holy Quran in a madrassah. I know what a madrassah is. It is not what the Americans have come to believe it to be because of their ignorance about Islam or Muslims. Unfortunately, Muslims all over the world had similar problems because of their ignorance about America and Americans.

I said I believe in America the Muslims have become scapegoats and were going through the worst period of their collective life. They are being subjected to persecution and were under the microscope as Germans, Japanese, Jews and other minorities were before them. It too shall pass. But in the meantime a lot of innocent people will fall through the cracks.

I told him FBI had become Gestapo like and was using similar tactics against Muslims as Gestapo had done in Germany against Jews. Peter, who spoke ocassionally, said at least Bill of Rights had not been revoked. I said not on paper but in reality Muslims were losing their rights and Bill of Rights had become a joke. Jason said it was an insult and FBI had not become Gestapo. I said FBI is being used against Muslims as it was used against presumed communists in the days of Senator MaCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover.

I said it was very tragic that Muslims are hounded for just being Muslims. But it was important that we keep on fighting for our rights in this country and all over the world to keep our beliefs and not care what happens to us. We are ready to face the music. We have to fight for our rights by organizing ourselves and by drawing attention of media and Senators and Representatives to the plight of innocent Muslims.

A world wide drag net has been thrown and a lot of innocent people have been caught in it. I said about half of the Gitmo detainees have been release. That means they were found to be innocent after suffering years of persecustion and detention. CIA-run 'black sites' and extraordinary renditions have been going on. People are tortured under FBI and CIA watch.

In Pakistan the chief justice of the supreme court has been fired because he was asking the government to produce missing Pakistanis in the court or set them free. Musharraf has been let loose like an unleashed dog on whoever FBI points at.

I told him I had intended to go to Pakistan and join the fight for human rights. He said it was better that I did not go. I believe he had deeper meaning in this sentence but I did not ask him to elaborate.

They spent three long hours with me. I asked them if they cared for coffee or soft drinks. They just accepted water.

I gave them eamils I had received from Ghazi to show them they were all related to the Human Rights of missing Pakistanis and nothing else.

I think today I saw phantoms from my future life. Let us see what is in store for me.

It was not my first encounter with them. They came after 9/11 when I was in New Jersey. His name was Mark Johnston. He was with one local police officer. Second time I got a business card from an FBI agent from James Town. I called her but never got in contact with her. It was back in 2004, when I first came to this village.

I think they will come back. And will keep coming. I hope I am wrong.

Democracy Under Arrest - Washington Post Editorial

Democracy Under Arrest Why is the Bush administration 'proud' to support Pakistan's military ruler?

THE BUSH administration offered another ringing public endorsement of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf this week. "We have a fundamental interest in the success of Pakistan as a moderate, stable, democratic Muslim nation," Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher said at a news conference Thursday in Islamabad during which he announced a $750 million aid package. According to the Associated Press, he added: "That's the direction that Musharraf is leading the nation, and we are proud to work with him."

The next day, Gen. Musharraf made a mockery of those words. His riot police attacked demonstrators and arrested a number of senior opposition leaders who were protesting the president's attempt to depose the chief justice of the country's supreme court. Jurist Iftikhar Chaudhry, whom Gen. Musharraf has held under de facto house arrest since March 9, had troubled the general by pressing investigations into matters such as the forced disappearances of terrorism suspects at the hands of Pakistani security forces. More significant, he was a potential obstacle to Gen. Musharraf's plan to extend his term in office by another five years through a vote by legislators who were chosen in rigged elections. The opposition says the maneuver violates the constitution.

Far from leading Pakistan toward democracy, Gen. Musharraf is systematically dismantling liberal and secular institutions in a country already threatened by Islamic extremism. One of those is the Supreme Court, which has a strong record of independence and is looked to by many Pakistanis as a guarantor of the rule of law. Gen. Musharraf's attempt to neuter the court is matched by his implacable refusal to come to terms with Pakistan's secular democratic political parties and former civilian prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. These are his natural allies in a battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Yet to protect his own grip on power, Gen. Musharraf prefers to make deals with the extremists while repressing the secularists.

Mr. Boucher's rhetoric notwithstanding, some in the Bush administration argue that it's worth tolerating and subsidizing Gen. Musharraf's autocracy because it is an ally against terrorism. But there, too, the general does not deliver. He has handed control of Waziristan, on the border with Afghanistan, to the Taliban, which is allowing al-Qaeda to operate training camps while waging war against U.S. and NATO forces across the border. Both houses of Congress have passed legislation linking further aid to Pakistan to steps against the Taliban. Yet the administration stiffly opposes the measures; Mr. Boucher publicly assured Pakistanis that there would be no aid restrictions. It's hard to understand why. Does the Bush administration really believe that its unqualified declarations of support will change this military strongman's behavior?

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Benazir Bhutto Promotes Herself As The Right Choice

A False Choice for Pakistan

By Benazir Bhutto, The Washington Post Monday, March 12, 2007

Last month President Bush told Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan that he must be more aggressive in hunting down al-Qaeda and the Taliban along his country's border with Afghanistan. During his recent visit to Islamabad, Vice President Cheney echoed the claim that al-Qaeda members were training in Pakistan's tribal areas and called on Musharraf to shut down their operations. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett also expressed concern recently about suspected terrorist safe havens.

Clearly, the pressure is on. Western leaders are finally beginning to recognize that Musharraf's regime has been unsuccessful in taming the Taliban, which has regrouped in the tribal areas of Pakistan while the military regime has given up trying to establish order on the Afghan border. At the same time, the regime has strategically chosen to help the United States when international criticism of the terrorists' presence becomes strident. The arrest of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a top Taliban strategist, by Pakistani authorities late last month is a case in point. The timing, right on the heels of American and British pleas for renewed toughness, is too convenient. Akhund was arrested solely to keep Western governments at bay.

There are other political calculations in all of this. For too long, the international perception has been that Musharraf's regime is the only thing standing between the West and nuclear-armed fundamentalists.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Islamic parties have never garnered more than 13 percent in any free parliamentary elections in Pakistan. The notion of Musharraf's regime as the only non-Islamist option is disingenuous and the worst type of fear-mongering.

Much has been said about Pakistan being a key Western ally in the war against terrorism. It is the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. aid -- the Bush administration proposed $785 million in its latest budget. Yet terrorism around the world has increased. Why is it that all terrorist plots -- from the Sept. 11 attacks, to Madrid, to London, to Mumbai -- seem to have roots in Islamabad?

Pakistan's military and intelligence services have, for decades, used religious parties for recruits. Political madrassas -- religious schools that preach terrorism by perverting the faith of Islam -- have spread by the tens of thousands.

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Pakistan must take steps toward hunting down al-Qaeda operatives in the "ungovernable" tribal and border areas -- which were once successfully governed by democratically elected civilian governments. The regime must also stop its intimidation tactics of recent weeks, which include brutal murders, assassination attempts and other attacks on opposition party members.

Of course Musharraf's regime, to legitimize its coup and divert attention from the institutionalized corruption of the military, accuses Pakistan's secular, democratic parties of corruption. But according to Transparency International, 67 percent of the people believe the regime is corrupt, surpassing the rate for past civilian governments. Musharraf's regime has lasted twice as long as any civilian government in Pakistan. Yet not one of its ministers or key political supporters has been investigated.

The National Accountability Bureau has persecuted opposition leaders for a decade on unproven corruption and mismanagement charges, hoping to grind them into submission. However, when politicians accused of corruption cross over to the regime, the charges miraculously disappear. Musharraf's regime exploits the judicial system as yet another instrument of coercion and intimidation to consolidate its illegitimate power. But the politics of personal destruction will not prevent me and other party leaders from bringing our case before the people of our nation this year, even if that could lead to imprisonment.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush said, "The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security: We must."

This holds true for countries in South and Central Asia as well. Now is the time to force Pakistan's government to make good on its promise to return to democracy.

The writer is chairwoman of the Pakistan People's Party and served as prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996. She lives in exile in Dubai.

Naeem Bokhari's Infamous Open Letter To Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry

Posted by Teeth Maestro on Feb. 26 and and by Watandost on Feb. 28, 2007.

Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
Chief Justice
Supreme Court of Pakistan
Islamabad
Pakistan

My Lord:

I write this letter as an Officer of the Supreme Court of Pakistan; as an Advocate enrolled in the apex Court since 1984 and in the High Courts since 1972; as an Attorney who has paid more income tax from his earnings in the legal profession than many of my friends, colleagues and seniors elevated to the Bench; and as a stake-holder in the dispensation of justice, intimately and vitally interested in the functioning of the Supreme Court.

Many judges who adorn the Bench in the Supreme Court and the High Court know me over decades, as a person endowed by nature with a pleasant disposition and acceptance of human failings. Towards the courts, my approach has always been of consistent and continuous display of respect and humility. I bow out of conviction, not compulsion. I use the words “My Lords”, because I want to, not because I have to. As an Attorney, I look up to the Court and want to see it on a high pedestal of dignity, compassion and justice, tempered with mercy.

I have seen my Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Hamood-ur-Rahman, Chief Justice Muhammad Yaqub Ali, Chief Justice S. Anwar-ul-Haq, Chief Justice Mohammad Haleem and how the Court functioned under them in the 1970s/1980s.

I witnessed the proceedings for the ouster of Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, became aware that the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, had ‘worked’ on some judges of the Supreme Court and saw the physical assault on the Court.

I was appalled at the manner in which Chief Justice Irshad Hasan Khan led the Supreme Court and pained at the insinuations against Justice Sheikh Riaz Ahmad, when he was the Chief Justice.

I was horrified by the establishment of a Bench of five judges constituted by Chief Justice Nazim Hussain Siddiqui to determine whether reduction in the retirement age for judges was constitutional or not. This was clearly designed to block your appointment. I was against the idea of Mr. Amirul Mulk Mengal being made the Chief Justice before you. Within the limits of my influence (which I readily admit to be very limited), I was totally for you to become the Chief Justice. Justice Javed Buttar is aware of my position, as is the Attorney General of Pakistan. The accelerated issue of the notification appointing you the Chief Justice put Justice Siddiqui’s move to rest.

I believed that you were vigorous, capable of lifting up the Supreme Court, creating an espirit-de-corps among your brother judges, restoring the dignity and grandeur of the apex Court, particularly considering the long tenure before you.

Alas this has not come about.

I am not perturbed by your insistence on protocol (despite my belief that the Chief Justice would rise in the eyes of everybody if he walked from his residence to the Supreme Court and hooters, police escort, flags is just fluff, not the substance of an office).

I am mildly amused at your desire to be presented a guard of honour in Peshawar. I am titillated by the appropriation of aMercedes-Benz car or is it cars, the use of the Government of the Punjab’s airplane to offer Fateha in Multan, to Sheikhupura for Fateha on a Government of the Punjab helicopter, to Hyderabad on a Government of the Sind’s plane for attending a High Court function, the huge amount spent in refurbishing the chamber and residence of the Chief Justice, the reservation for yourself of a wing in Supreme Court Judges guest house in Lahore, the permanent occupation by the Supreme Court of the official residence of the Chief Justice of Sind, who per force lives in the basement of his father’s house. As his class fellow in the Government College, Lahore, I can vouch that living in the basement will do him no harm.

I am not perturbed that Dr. Arsalaan (your son) secured 16/100 in the English paper for the Civil Services Examination, that there is a case against him in some court in Baluchistan, that from the Health Department in Baluchistan he has shifted to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), that he has obtained training in the Police Academy, that he reportedly drives a BMW 7-Series car, that there is a complaint against him with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

My grievances and protests are different.

I am perturbed that the Supreme Court should issue a clarificatory statement on his behalf. I am perturbed that Justice (Retd.) Wajihuddin Ahmed should be constrained to advise you on television that “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others”. I am perturbed that the Chief Justice should summon Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman to his chambers on Dr. Arsalaan’s account.

I am appalled that you announce decisions in Court, while in the written judgment an opposite conclusion is recorded.

In the Petition for leave to appeal filed by Dr. Sher Afghan Niazi, Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs (in which Respondent’s Counsels were Mr. Khalid Anwar and Mr. Qadir Saeed), you refused to grant leave in open Court and yet in the written order, leave was granted to Dr. Sher Afghan Niazi.

On 15-2-2007, Mr. Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim complained that in open Court you had accepted his appeal but dismissed the same in the judgement, subsequently recorded.

If Mr. Khalid Anwar, a former Minister of Law and Parliamentary Affairs, and Mr Fakrhuddin, Senior Counsel, are treated in this manner, the fate of lesser known lawyers would certainly be far worse.

My grievances also concern the manner in which the last and highest court of appeal is dispensing justice, under your leadership.

My Lord, the dignity of lawyers is consistently being violated by you. We are treated harshly, rudely, brusquely and nastily. We are not heard. We are not allowed to present our case. There is little scope for advocacy. The words used in the Bar Room for Court No. 1 are “the slaughter house”. We are cowed down by aggression from the Bench, led by you. All we receive from you is arrogance, aggression and belligerence. You also throw away the file, while contemptuously announcing: “This is dismissed”.

Yet this aggression is not for everyone. When Mr. Sharifuddin Pirzada appears, your Lordship’s demeanour and appearance is not just sugar and honey. You are obsequious to the point of meekness. So apart from violating our dignity, which the Constitution commands to be inviolable, we suffer discrimination in your Court.

I am not raising the issue of verbal onslaughts and threats to Police Officers and other Civil Servants, who have the misfortune to be summoned, degraded and reminded that “This is the Supreme Court”.

The way in which My Lord conducts proceedings is not conducive to the process of justice. In fact, it obstructs due process and constitutes contempt of the Supreme Court itself.

I am pained at the wide publicity to cases taken up by My Lord in the Supreme Court under the banner of Fundamental Rights. The proceedings before the Supreme Court can conveniently and easily be referred to the District and Sessions Judges. I am further pained by the media coverage of the Supreme Court on the recovery of a female. In the bar room, this is referred to as a “Media Circus”.

My Lord, this communication may anger you and you are in any case prone to get angry in a flash, but do reflect upon it. Perhaps you are not cognizant of what your brother judges feel and say about you.

My Lord, before a rebellion arises among your brother judges (as in the case of Mr. Justice Sajjad Ali Shah), before the Bar stands up collectively and before the entire matter is placed before the Supreme Judicial Council, there may be time to change and make amends.

I hope you have the wisdom and courage to make these amends and restore serenity, calm, compassion, patience and justice tempered with mercy to my Supreme Court.

My Lord, we all live in the womb of time and are judged, both by the present and by history. The judgement about you, being rendered in the present, is adverse in the extreme.

Yours faithfully,

NAEEM BOKHARI
Advocate
Supreme Court of
Pakistan
Islamabad, Pakistan

General's Justice

Let us read the Article 209 of the Constitution of Pakistan to find out if it really gives Gen. Musharraf power to do what he has shamelessly done Friday, by firing the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

209 Supreme Judicial Council.

(1) There shall be a Supreme Judicial Council of Pakistan, in this Chapter referred to as the Council.

(2) The Council shall consist of,
(a) the Chief Justice of Pakistan;
(b) the two next most senior Judges of the Supreme Court; and
(c) the two most senior Chief Justices of High Courts.

(3) If at any time the Council is inquiring into the capacity or conduct of a Judge who is a member of the Council, or a member of the Council is absent or is unable to act due to illness or any other cause, then
(a) if such member is a Judge of the Supreme Court, the Judge of the Supreme Court who is next in seniority below the Judges referred to in paragraph (b) of clause (2), and
(b) if such member is the Chief Justice of a High Court; the Chief Justice of another High Court who is next in seniority amongst the Chief Justices of the remaining High Courts, shall act as a member of the Council in his place.

(4) If, upon any matter inquired into by the Council, there is a difference of opinion amongst its members, the opinion of the majority shall prevail, and the report of the Council to the President shall be expressed in terms of the view of the majority.

(5) If, on information [231A] [from any source, the Council or] the President is of the opinion that a Judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court,
(a) may be incapable of properly performing the duties of his office by reason of physical or mental incapacity; or
(b) may have been guilty of misconduct,
the President shall direct the Council to [231B] [, or the Council may, on its own motion,] inquire into the matter.

(6) If, after inquiring into the matter, the Council reports to the President that it is of the opinion,
(a) that the Judge is incapable of performing the duties of his office or has been guilty of misconduct, and
(b) that he should be removed from office,
the President may remove the Judge from office.

(7) A Judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court shall not be removed from office except as provided by this Article.

(8) The Council shall issue a code of conduct to be observed by Judges of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts".

This is the complete text of Article 209 of the Constitution of Pakistan. It determines the composition, purpose and duties of the Supreme Judicial Council. Even a casual reading of this article leaves no doubt that accoding to clause (7) "A Judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court shall not be removed from office except as provided by this Article".

Now, waht is the way to do it?

Clause 5 explains that, "on information from any source", either Council "on its own motion" may initiate an inquiry or the President shall direct the Council to intiate it, but it is the Council that determines if "a Judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court" has been found to be "incapable of properly performing the duties of his office by reason" of (i) "physical or mental incapacity" and/or (ii) was "guilty of misconduct" and Clause 6 says that after inquiring the Council reports its opinion to the President that the said judge is indeed, (a) "incapable of performing the duties of his office or has been guilty of misconduct", and (b) that he should be removed from office", then and only then "the President may remove the Judge".

But this is not what has happened. The Council has not initiated an inquiry. The President has not directed the Council to do so.

And this is what has actually happened!

1- The president receives "information" about Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan from his cronies, most recently from Naeem Bokhari;

2- The president does not direct the Council to "inquire into the matter";

3- Ignoring the Constitution the president "summons" the judge to his military residence and in presence of the prime minister confronts him with the information provided by Naeem Bokhari and force him to resign;

4- When the judge refuses to do so he is kept in the miltary residence of the president for hours;

5- He is "escorted" by the police to his residence but is not allowed to go to the court where he wants to go;

6- Police guard is appointed to detain his in his house and any person who wants to see him is stopped from doing so;

7- The president then asks the Council to inquire into the matter.

Now, cleary this is not what the Constitution says. But, then who the hell gives a f%&@ what the constitution says. It is the rule of jungle law.

Is this the kind of democracy Bush wants to promote all over the world starting with his "buddy"? Is there a coincidence that General has sacked the Chief Justice the same day America has opened military hearings at Guantánamo Bay in secret chambers?

A Poem by Musharraf?

This poem was surreptitiously included and published in the curriculum book, "A Textbook of English", by government-run National Book Foundation, intended for the First Year students of Pakistan's colleges. Later it was revealed that the first letters of each line spelled out "President George W Bush".

Was it a cheap effort on Musharraf's part to please President Bush? Was he ghost writing for Bush as Humayun Gohar was ghost writing for Musharraf? Was it a coincidence as the education ministry officials initially argued it to be? Then it was said that it may have been downloaded from the Internet by a textbook writer, and later approved for publication by the curriculum committee. An education ministry spokesman also insisted that the poem was a good description of a true leader, anyway.

How low they can go?

THE LEADER by anonymous (Musharraf?)

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.

Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.

Wanting the world to join his firm stand,

Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

BBC

Musharraf's Second Coup D'etat

Today I received a call from Mrs. Amina Masood Janjua from Islamabad. She sounded quite upset and disturbed. I suspected, as usual, she had no good news for me in the case of Disappeared Pakistanis in the Supreme Court.

A few moments into our conversation she started sobbing. You would expect a woman to be distraught if her husband had been picked up, as hers was, by the intelligence agencies since July 2005

I started asking her how it went in the court. She said Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had presented a list of 148 missing persons to the Chief Justice and had told him that Government was behind disappearances. The Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had issued notices to the federal and provincial governments to appear in the court on March 26.

Then she dropped the bomb. The Chief Justice himself had been summoned to the Preseident’s office and sacked.

-----------------------

Chief Justice was summoned to Army House and was informed by Musharraf, in presence of Prime Minister 'Shortcut' Aziz (steel mill fame) and 'other officials' (read: intelligence agencies' heads), about the allegations of "misconduct and misuse of power”.against him. Justice Iftikhar 'remained' (read: illegally detained) at Army House for five hours where officials 'explained' the allegations to him. But the chief justice could not satisfy the president and prime minister regarding the allegations.

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General Pervez Musharraf by a presidential notification rendered the Chief Justice "unable to perform his functions as chief justice as a reference has been filed against him under Article 209 of the Constitution". General "while exercising his powers under Article 180 of the Constitution" was "pleased to appoint the most senior judge available, Justice Javed Iqbal, to act as acting chief justice of Pakistanwas also "pleased to appoint the most senior judge available, Justice Javed Iqbal, to act as acting chief justice of Pakistan".

Justice Javed Iqbal, who is not even the senior-most SC judge (the senior-most SC judge is Rana Bhagwandas who is on an Indian visit), took oath in a "hurriedly arranged" ceremony in a small room. Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar administered the oath. Only two SC judges – Justice Nawaz Abbasi and Justice Raja Fayyaz – attended. The Supreme Judicial Council met in an emergency session soon after the acting chief justice was sworn in and issued notice to Justice Iftikhar that he "shall not perform functions as judge of the Supreme Court or as chief justice of Pakistan till the above reference is answered" and ordered him to appear at 1:30pm on March 13 to defend himself. To attend the Supreme Judicial Council's meeting, Lahore High Court CJ Iftikhar Hussain Chaudhry and SHC CJ Sabihuddin Ahmed were especially flown in to Islamabad.

Justice Chaudhry's term, who was sworn in as chief justice of Pakistan on June 30, 2005, was to expire on December 11, 2013.

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Lawyers and judges condemned Musharaf’s decision and the manner to suspend Supreme Court Chief Justice Chaudhry. The Supreme Court Bar Association president Munir A. Malik called it an “attack on the judiciary” and vowed to "take a consensus decision to save the superior courts" in a meeting due Saturday. Former President of the SC Bar Hamid Khan said that Gen Musharraf President had no right to summon the chief justice to Army House in Rawalpindi to present a charge sheet against him. Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former SC judge who refused to take oath under General Musharraf’s Provisional Constitutional Order, said the suspension was “unconstitutional” as there was "nothing in the Constitution that allows anyone to dismiss judges”. He said it was up to the chief justice himself and not the president to decide if the Chief Justice should continue in his position while the reference against him was being decided.

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The opposition is up in arms, at least in words, and calls the suspension of Chief Justice a “serious blow” to the Constitution. Fazlur Rehman saw "bad intentions" behind this surprise move and said that it could adversly impact Pakistan’s economy, politics, and internal situation and could pave the way for the postponement of general elections. Raza Rabbani of PPP said it was a black day in the history of Pakistan. He said the Chief Justice was fired because he had indicted the government in the Steel Mills privatisation case. Raja Zafarul Haq of the PMLN, said that Justice Chaudhry was sacked because he "was a threat to what the government might be doing in the next few weeks.”