ISLAMABAD/KARACHI, 15 May 2007 — Unidentified gunmen yesterday shot dead a Supreme Court official, regarded as a key witness by the legal team representing Pakistan’s suspended chief justice in his fight against a move by President Pervez Musharraf to sack him.
Syed Hammad Raza, an additional registrar of the top court, was shot at point-blank range by two or three gunmen just before dawn at his home in the capital, Islamabad, police and relatives said.
“He was an important person in our case,” Munir Ahmed Malik, a lawyer on suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s legal team, said.
Chaudhry has been at the center of a judicial and political crisis since Musharraf moved to sack him two months ago over undisclosed allegations of misconduct.
Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas and Chaudhry separately visited Raza’s family and expressed their condolences.
Raza was stationed in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where Chaudhry was raised and served as a judge, before being reassigned to the Supreme Court.
“You called him to Islamabad. You should have protected him, and now my children need protection as well,” Shadana, Raza’s grief-stricken widow, told Chaudhry. Shadana said that she was convinced it was a targeted killing as there was no attempt at robbery. “They just came and shot him. He opened the door and they shot him and ran away.”
Meanwhile, a general strike paralyzed Karachi, Islamabad, lahore and Quetta and closed businesses in a few other cities yesterday as discontent grew over the ouster of the chief justice and a weekend of violence that left 41 people dead.
Shops were shut and traffic was thin on the roads in the port city, where security forces have authority to shoot rioters on sight, after the weekend witnessed the worst political violence in Pakistan in years.
Opposition parties blamed the government for the violence and called a nationwide protest strike yesterday.
“There is a complete strike in Karachi,” said Azhar Faruqi, the city police chief.
He reported that law and order was improving — after the unrest took an ominous ethnic turn on Sunday with clashes between Urdu-speaking Mohajirs linked to a pro-government party and Pashtuns, whose rivalry has caused bloodshed here in the past.
Officials said the strike was being observed in towns and cities across Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital. It was also observed, in varying degrees, in Islamabad and the capitals of Pakistan’s other three provinces, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.
Many citizens appeared to support the strike call; others observed it out of fear of recrimination or unrest during pro-Chaudhry street demonstrations.
In Lahore, about 8,000 people, including lawyers, opposition party and human rights activists, chanted “Go Musharraf Go!” and “Death to Altaf Hussain.” Altaf is leader of the pro-government Mutahida Qaumi Movement party blamed for much of the Karachi violence.
Newspaper editorials yesterday were scathing of the president.
The Daily Times accused Musharraf of sanctioning “brutal action to stop the chief justice in his tracks, leaving more than 40 dead.”
In Islamabad, the Supreme Court began hearing a raft of petitions challenging Chaudhry’s suspension, but proceedings were adjourned after one of the 14 judges declined to hear the case. Proceedings were due to resume today with the remaining 13 judges.
