Police, lawyers clash, hundreds held

The lawyers who were shouting slogans like “Go Musharraf Go!” retaliated by pelting stones on security personnel, who bundled over 200 protesters into waiting vehicles.

Lawyers, who were at the front of a movement against Musharraf’s military regime after he tried to sack Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in March, organised protests in other provincial capitals Karachi, Quetta, and Peshawar as well as the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

More than 100 lawyers shouting anti-Government slogans were baton-charged and arrested by police in the southern port city of Karachi.

Police and paramilitary troops surrounded the Sindh High Court building and prevented the lawyers and media from going near it.

Police broke open the doors of the Bar Association office in Karachi and whisked away lawyers, including two women, in vans. Among those detained were Salahuddin Ahmed, the son of former Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed of the Sindh High Court, who has opposed emergency. Over 100 lawyers were arrested in Faisalabad in Punjab. The Supreme Court Bar Association, Pakistan Bar Council and the Bar associations of the four provinces called on lawyers to observe a “Black Day” on Monday by boycotting courts and organising rallies.

Security forces, which arrested over 500 people, including opposition leaders lawyers and rights activists, on Sunday continued their crackdown with Islamist alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal claiming that 600 of its supporters were detained overnight.

Protesting lawyers were also arrested near courts in Rawalpindi, TV channels reported.

Lawyers and other organisations called a ‘hartal’ in Quetta, where media were prevented by police from covering the situation, Geo TV said.

Thousands of policemen were deployed around all superior courts in Pakistan, including the Supreme Court, to thwart the protests by lawyers’ organisations.