Islamabad: Pakistani lawyers called for a countrywide strike on Monday against the imposition of emergency rule by President Pervez Musharraf, a leading lawyer said.
'We are launching our struggle from Monday. Lawyers will be observing a strike tomorrow. We will be holding protests and boycotting courts,' Hamid Ali Khan, former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told Reuters today.
A lawyers’ movement emerged as the vanguard of an anti-Musharraf campaign after the army chief suspended the country's top judge in March, in a move seen as an attack on the independence of the judiciary.
Pakistani authorities on Saturday arrested the main lawyer who has been arguing in favour of challenges to president Pervez Musharraf's re-election, private television reported.
Geo television reported that police had detained Aitzaz Ahsan after Musharraf imposed Emergency rule, just days before the Supreme Court was due to rule on the legality of the October 6 vote.
Ahsan, a former cabinet minister, also successfully defended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry after Musharraf tried to sack him earlier this year.
(With IBNLive.com inputs)
Comments
0 comment