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Islamabad: Three key leaders of the Pakistani lawyer community were again placed under house detention on Saturday for a month, barely a day after their release from a 90-day confinement, official sources and reports said.
Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, was served a detention order after authorities stopped him from boarding a flight at Lahore, capital of Punjab province, for southern Sindh province.
Former SCBA chief, retired judge Tariq Mehmood, was again put under detention at his residence in Islamabad.
Another firebrand lawyer, Ali Ahmad Kurd, was similarly confined at his home in southwestern Quetta, capital of Balochistan province.
Officials said the restrictions on their movement were re-imposed because of their suspected intentions to fuel agitation by lawyers demanding reinstatement of sacked chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and some 60 other deposed judges.
Ahsan, who belongs to slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, was prevented from travelling to Sindh as the government of the province had banned his entry to the region for a month. "The ban is unconstitutional and illegal," Ahsan told media before being escorted to his house by the police.
Address
He said he wanted to offer prayers at the grave of Bhutto at the family's ancestral town of Naudero and also meet widower Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of PPP, to condole with him.
Before going to the Lahore airport, Aitzaz addressed hundreds of lawyers, vowing that the movement of lawyers for reinstatement of sacked judges and restoration of independent judiciary would gain further momentum. Lashing out at President Pervez Musharraf, he said the retired general had committed contempt of court by repeating allegations of misconduct and corruption against Chaudhry during his recent European tour.
These accusations, he said, had been thrown out by the Supreme Court in July in a landmark verdict and Chaudhry was reinstated. But Musharraf through his "illegal and unconstitutional" measures on November 3 imposed emergency and carried out a purge of the judiciary to pre-empt a feared judgement against his controversial re-election in uniform in October, Ahsan said.
"Lawyers will not call off their movement until we get all illegally removed judges restored and the independence of the judiciary is achieved," he said.
Retired judge Tariq Mehmood in Islamabad also vowed he would continue his struggle for rule of law and supremacy of the constitution. "Restoration of deposed judges, lifting of curbs on media and respect for civil rights ... is the only way out."
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