Thaindian News

Karachi, Sep 7 (IANS) A list of 2,500 beneficiaries of an ordinance granting immunity to Pakistani politicians and others from the corruption charges they were facing has gone missing from Sindh’s interior department, Online news agency reported Monday.
However, not all is lost as the interior department had previously sent a copy of the list to the Sindh High Court.

Quoting sources, Online said a law enforcement agency had called for the list of beneficiaries of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) from the interior department a few days ago but it was found to be missing.

Sources said the list contained names of leading members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), its coalition partner Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) and the erstwhile ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q).

Two officials of the interior department also figured in the list.

Investigations are underway to ascertain if the list is misplaced or has been deliberately taken away from the office.

Then president Pervez Musharraf had promulgated the NRO in October 2007 granting amnesty to politicians, bureaucrats and political workers accused of corruption, embezzlement, money-laundering, murder and terrorism.

It was because of the ordinance that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his late wife Benazir Bhutto could return home from exile.

Pakistani Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, while declaring illegal the emergency Musharraf had declared Nov 3, 2007, had on July 31 also invalidated the NRO.

Chaudhry had revoked the ordinance soon after it was promulgated but was dismissed after Musharraf declared the emergency. His successor, Abdul Hameed Dogar, revived the NRO in February 2008.

Chaudhry, who was reinstated in March after a bruising lawyers’ agitation, ruled July 31 that Dogar’s appointment was unconstitutional and invalidated all his rulings.

Chaudhry has also given the government 90 days, as of July 31, to pass the NRO into law or allow it to lapse.

But, as The News noted Aug 1, “the real question is not about what happens on this front but whether the benefits taken under NRO are legal in nature; are they transactions that shall be treated as past and closed transactions even if the ordinance is allowed to lapse or will they become alive once the ordinance dies?”

Interestingly, among the others who benefited from the NRO are Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam that is a junior partner in the ruling federal coalition, former prime minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali and a host of retired army generals.