The Sharif Deal and Musharraf’s men

To delay the possible arrival of the Sharif brothers, yesterday the regime leaked parts of the Sharif-Saudi deal to the press.

Last Friday your Blogger informed his readers ( Blog: Saudi-Nawaz Sharif Exile Deal, etc) that the ‘deal’

consisted of a few papers on the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry’s letterhead listing out a number of conditions which are signed by Nawaz Sharif and countersigned by Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Minister of the Interior.

Readers were also told that the ‘Deal’ was a result of Saudi royals fears that Nawaz Sharif would share a fate similar to his predecessor Z A Bhutto and their lack of confidence in Musharraf’s personal declarations to the contrary.

Even if the original document is produced it obviously will have no legal validity in Pakistan. At the same time the Saudi silence on the ‘deal’ is quite deafening. Your Blogger believes that as the deal was pushed through simply to protect Nawaz Sharif’s life, the Saudis have little interest in the matter now.

By asking for an adjournment for three weeks to get the original documents from Saudi Arabia, Musharraf’s legal team is all too obviously playing for delaying tactics. Musharraf will make his problematic attempt to get re-elected through the existing assemblies probably within the next two or possibly three weeks. Having the Sharif brothers present in Pakistan during that period poses a nightmare scenario for him, as many unnerved PML(Q) members of the existing assemblies will then simply refuse to vote for him.

Latest: According a new press report the original ‘Deal’ document is already in possession of the military regime. If that is the case, then the refusal to present it in the Supreme Court and the request for a three week adjournment is not only deceitful subterfuge, but more importantly, a blatant act of perjury.

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Now something about Musharraf’s legal team.

In recent weeks your Blogger has been fascinated by the ‘eminence’ of the individuals handpicked by Musharraf to fight his legal battles in the Supreme Court.

Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada

While everyone knows that this gentleman has provided legal advice to every Pakistan military dictator on how to circumvent the laws of our nation, apparently there might be more to him than meets the eye.

Ask senior members of the Karachi society who were out and about in the early 1950s, and they will tell you that Pirzada’s first wife is supposed to have died in strange circumstances. And, that soon after the incident the man apparently married his deceased wife’s sister. According to some of these now elderly citizens, at the time a few people suspected that Pirzada had been up to no good but in the absence of proof nothing ever came of it.

It would of course be improper and inappropriate on your Blogger’s part to presume that Pirzada had something to do with his first wife’s death, but the fact that there was suspicion about him at the time does indicate the kind of reputation he enjoyed during his younger days.


Malik Muhammad Qayyum

In 2001 Qayum was forced to resign in disgrace from the Lahore High Court after the Supreme Court ruled that Qayum’s decision in a case involving Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, had been politically motivated.

The Supreme Court said that the judge had "acquired a personal interest" in the case and that there was "close liaison" between the judge, Saifur Rehman, the minister in charge of the anti-corruption bureau, and Nawaz Sharif himself.

The Supreme Court also noticed that Qayyum and his wife had applied for diplomatic passports on 17 April 1998 after taking up the case against Bhutto and Zardari. The Foreign Office initially opposed their applications on the ground that diplomatic passports could not be issued to a judge and his wife. However, three days after Qayyum issued an order on 27 April 1998 freezing the properties and assets of Bhutto and Zardari, Qayyum and his wife were granted diplomatic passports

Also, quite revealingly, at the Supreme Court appeal hearing defence lawyers produced taped conversations, which exposed the then law minister, Khalid Anwar, Saifur Rehman and Qayum discussing the case and the forthcoming verdict. ‘Give them full dose," was what Saifur Rehman told Qayum.

Ahmed Raza Kasuri

In 1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto met his death at the gallows as a result of being convicted in the murder of Nawab Mohammad Ahmed Khan, the father of Ahmed Raza Kasuri.

Shortly after the death of his father on 9 November 1974, Ahmed Raza Kasuri lodged a First Information Report (FIR) with the local police station accusing Bhutto of having plotted the killing - it was this FIR which formed the basis of Bhutto’s trial for murder during General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime. Some ten days after the murder, on 20 November 1974, Ahmed Raza Kasuri arrived in the National Assembly, carrying the blood-soaked shirt of his slain father and a bottle filled with his blood, and publicly vowed to avenge his father's death.

What few people know is that after holding Bhutto responsible for the killing of his father, Ahmed Raza Kasuri applied for a PPP ticket in 1977 and contested the elections as a member of the PPP under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s leadership.

With these facts before us, I will leave it to the reader to make a judgement on the moral worth of the man.

From the onset of the Chief Justice case very few members of the legal fraternity were willing to present the regime’s case in court. It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that the men who eventually turned up to defend Musharraf, are, putting it mildly, not known for sturdiness of character.

Pakistan

Nawaz Sharif