Thaindian News

Islamabad, July 23 (IANS) Former president Pervez Musharraf has begun contacting legal experts after the Supreme Court summoned him to defend his Nov 3, 2007 decision to impose an emergency and sack judges of the apex court and other courts.
Musharraf consulted legal expert Sharifuddin Pirzada, former attorney general Malik Qayyum and former law minister Khalid Ranjha and discussed various aspects of the petition being heard by the Supreme Court, Daily Times reported Thursday.

Qayyum said Musharraf had contacted him to learn the details of the court proceedings and he had advised the former president to appear before the court.

A 14-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry issued summons to Musharraf to appear in person or through his counsel July 29 after the federal government refused to defend him in court.

“Determining responsibility for the steps taken on Nov 3, 2007 is necessary,” the chief justice observed before issuing summons.

Chaudhry, who was one of the 80-odd Supreme Court and high court judges sacked, had been reinstated this March after a bruising lawyers’ agitation.

The former president is on a lecture tour abroad and is currently in London. It was unclear when, if at all, he would return to Pakistan.

Musharraf had sacked the higher judiciary after it refused to take fresh oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) he promulgated along with the emergency Nov 3, 2007.

The emergency had been declared just as the Supreme Court was to deliver its verdict on the constitutionality of Musharraf’s re-election in October 2007.

It had been contended that the same parliament and provincial assemblies that had elected Musharraf in 2002 had re-elected him in 2007 and this was unconstitutional.