Thaindian News

Islamabad, March 31 (IANS) The Pakistani government Wednesday sacked a senior official of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), as also an aide of the country’s interior minister, in line with a Supreme Court directive.
The court had last December nullified the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), an amnesty against graft, and asked the government to remove NAB Prosecutor General Danishwar Malik and Sajjad Haider, the staff officer of Interior Minister Rehman Malik.

Danishwar Malik had taken into his possession the court records relating to a Swiss money laundering case involving President Asif Ali Zardari when Pakistan asked for this to be closed citing the NRO, Online news agency reported.

On Wednesday, the NAB told the Supreme Court that the Swiss authorities have been approached to reopen this case.

Then president Pervez Musharraf promulgated the NRO primarily to enable former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Zardari, who faced a slew of corruption cases, to return home from self-imposed exile.

Bhutto was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack as she left a political rally in the adjacent garrison town of Rawalpindi December 27, 2007.

A host of other politicians, retired army officers and bureaucrats also benefited from the NRO. With the amnesty now being annulled, cases against 158 individuals who had benefited from it have now been reopened.

Haider is considered a close friend of Interior Minister Malik, also a beneficiary of the NRO, besides being accused in another graft case which has now been reopened.

Meanwhile, the names of Danishwar Malik and Sajjad Haider have been included in the exit control list, which means they cannot leave the country without the government’s specific permission.