ISLAMABAD, 22 December 2007 — Police yesterday rearrested Aitzaz Ahsan, a leading jurist and head of the Supreme Court Bar Association, who was freed Thursday for Eid Al-Adha after being detained last month.
Ahsan was arrested and taken back to his Lahore residence while trying to go to Islamabad to meet Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the deposed chief justice who is also under house arrest.
“He was intercepted and re-arrested,” said Iqbal Haider, secretary general of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. Police did not produce any arrest warrant.
“Ahsan was stopped from traveling to Islamabad despite the fact that authorities had not set any condition on his movements,” Haider told AFP, calling the move “insane.”
Just after he was given three days of leave for the holiday on Thursday, Ahsan said he was ready to face “batons, bullets and bombs” in what has become a bitter struggle over the nation’s courts.
President Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Chaudhry in March, setting off months of political turmoil that saw judges and lawyers take to the streets in protest.
The Supreme Court ordered Chaudhry’s reinstatement, but he was later sacked and put under house arrest when Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November.
Musharraf has lifted the emergency but vowed that judges sacked during the emergency will not be given back their jobs.
Meanwhile Chaudhry was blocked from attending prayers for the holiday on Friday, one of his close associates, Athar Minullah, told AFP.
Police have erected barbed wire and placed cement barricades on the road that leads to Chaudhry’s house, and earlier stopped about 100 lawyers who tried to visit him for the holiday.
