Pakistan's Supreme Court yesterday reinstated three judges ousted by former President Pervez Musharraf, cementing political divisions in the country a day before it elects a new leader.
Pakistan's Supreme Court yesterday reinstated three judges ousted by former President Pervez Musharraf, cementing political divisions in the country a day before it elects a new leader.
Musharraf's purge of the court last year deepened his unpopularity and helped his political foes to a victory in February elections that they crowned by forcing him to quit last month.
However, the second-largest party then quit the ruling coalition over the failure to restore all the judges, including the ousted chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.
Tassadiq Hussain Jillani, Shakirullah Jan and Syed Jamshed Ali were sworn back into the court yesterday.
The move deepens the rift between the ruling Pakistan People's Party of Asif Ali Zardari, who is the widower of murdered former premier Benazir Bhutto and front-runner to become president in a vote by MPs today, and that of former premier Nawaz Sharif.
Zardari has countered calls to restore the judges by arguing it would need constitutional changes to untangle a legal mess bequeathed by Musharraf.
Musharraf imposed emergency rule last November in order to purge the court and halt legal challenges to his plan to stay on for another five years as president.
The political turmoil comes at a time when militant attacks linked to al Qaeda are sweeping Pakistan.
Al Qaeda's top commander in Afghanistan yesterday warned of more attacks against the West in an internet video that paid tribute to a suicide bomber said to have carried out the June bombing of the Danish Embassy in Islamabad.
The blast killed six, including one Danish citizen, and caused widespread destruction in the area. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was carrying out Osama bin Laden's promise to exact revenge over the publishing of a cartoon of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in Danish papers.
In the video, Mustafa Abu al Yazeed, warned "once more the Crusader states that insult, mock and defame our Prophet that we will exact revenge at the appropriate time and place".
Abu al Yazeed, an Egyptian also known as Abu Saeed al Masri, said the embassy attack in Islamabad was "but the beginning".-AP
