QUETTA, 19 June 2007 — Dozens of lawyers, dressed in their customary black suits and chanting “Death to Musharraf,” boycotted courts and staged a rally in southwest Pakistan yesterday to protest a raid on a relative of the country’s chief justice.
About 60 lawyers marched through Quetta, a day after armed men allegedly broke into the home of a nephew of Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry in the southwestern city.
Amir Rana, who is also a lawyer, alleged Sunday that the men were intelligence agents sent to harass him because of his uncle’s standoff with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Hadi Shakeel, a senior lawyer in Quetta said a one-day strike by his colleagues had paralyzed court proceedings across the region yesterday. “If the government and its agencies are trying to harass or arrest our lawyers, they can go ahead, but we will continue our struggle for the restoration of the chief justice,” Shakeel told the demonstrators gathered in a city square.
The lawyers had marched from the district court to the Quetta press club shouting slogans also including “Go, Musharraf, go!” and “We won’t accept the orders of the Musharraf government.”
At the hearing yesterday, his lead counsel, Aitzaz Ahsan, claimed that the incident involving the judge’s nephew “appears to have the signature of some government agency.” He also raised concern about the death of a Supreme Court official. Authorities have suggested robbers shot Syed Hammad Raza at his Islamabad home on May 14, but relatives say it was an assassination-style killing. Ahsan said Chaudhry’s legal team had received threatening phone calls and asked the court to “intervene.” The judges did not respond yesterday. He told the court that reference against the chief justice was sent in haste.
