ISLAMABAD, 18 December 2004 — Sindh High Court has granted permission to Asif Ali Zardari, husband of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to keep private security guards and directed the provincial government to take appropriate security measures for him following his release from eight years in jail.
Zardari along with a panel of lawyers appeared yesterday before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Syed Saeed Ashhad and Justice Maqbool Baqar. Zadari pleaded his case himself and said that he had received extraordinary security during detention but the situation has changed now.
Zardari submitted that in view of threats to his life he had sent applications to Sindh government for providing security, permission to carry licensed weapons and use of colored glasses for his vehicle.
But the Sindh government on Dec. 2 rejected his requests on grounds that a ban had been imposed by the government on public display of arms and use of colored glasses on vehicles.
Zardari was freed on bail last month in the last of 17 cases of graft, murder and drug smuggling.
Bhutto’s husband is fighting a parallel legal battle to be issued a passport by the government. An official in Karachi said on Wednesday that Zardari’s application had been returned on technical grounds.
Zardari had said that after his release he would travel to Dubai to be reunited with his wife. The couple have not seen each other since she went into exile.
“I have already moved the court to get my passport as it is my fundamental right as a free citizen to go abroad, meet my wife and children,” Zardari said.
Zardari has also told the court that his name should be removed from a government list of people not allowed to leave the country, he said. A hearing on the matter is set for Dec. 21.
