Godlike Productions - News: Pakistan arrests opposition leaders as election draws near

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

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Pakistan arrests opposition leaders as election draws near

Boston Globe

2007-09-23

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - With President Pervez Musharraf facing an election in just two weeks, police last night arrested key opposition leaders who had vowed to try to block the general's plans for winning a new term.

Opposition party spokesmen said more than 20 leaders were rounded up at their homes and served with 30-day detention orders or were being sought for arrest.

Several are members of Parliament, the body that will vote along with the provincial assemblies Oct. 6 in a hotly contested attempt by Musharraf to extend his reign for another five years.

"This just shows that Musharraf has gone berserk," said Ahsan Iqbal, spokesman for a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. "He wants to arrest all the opposition leaders and then get himself elected."

Iqbal said that he was also being sought by police but that he and others had gone into hiding.

The government had no immediate comment on the detentions.

Security officials said police had orders to take 35 opposition leaders into custody, the Associated Press reported. Many of those sought have links to Sharif, who was overthrown as prime minister by Musharraf, or are members of Islamist parties opposed to the president's alliance with the United States.

Sharif, who was ousted in Musharraf's 1999 military coup and is now exiled, along with members of religious parties are spearheading opposition to the general's plan for a new term.

Musharraf has vowed to win a new term in a vote from assemblies that are about to expire. He has also said he will stand for election in uniform but will resign the post of army chief if he wins.

Opposition groups are challenging those plans in the Supreme Court, saying Musharraf's election would be unconstitutional.

The politicians arrested last night all appeared to be members of Sharif's center-right party and a coalition of conservative religious parties. Both groups have vowed to quit the Parliament in protest of Musharraf's plans. They have also vowed to wage a campaign in the streets to try to stop him.

Javed Hashmi, acting president of Sharif's party, said he was asleep in his room at the Parliament Lodges - where legislators stay while in Islamabad - when police came to his door at 10:30 p.m. and served him with detention papers. They did not specify the charges, Hashmi said.

Five officers armed with rifles stood guard outside Hashmi's apartment late yesterday. Hashmi said that he expected to be transferred to jail but that police had not told him when that would happen. He was told, however, that he was not allowed to leave.

Hashmi was released from jail last month, on orders from the Supreme Court, after serving four years for publicizing a letter he said was written by dissident military officers critical of Musharraf.

Musharraf's government has often rounded up opposition figures in advance of planned protests. This month, Sharif's party claimed that more than 1,000 of its members were detained in the days before Sharif flew back to Pakistan after seven years of exile.

Sharif was in Pakistan for only four hours before he was deported back to Saudi Arabia, despite a Supreme Court order that he had "an inalienable right" to return.

Members of the center-left Pakistan People's Party were apparently not affected by the roundup. Although the party opposes Musharraf, its leader, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has been negotiating a possible power-sharing deal with the general.

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