Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf slipped out of the Islamabad High Court on Thursday after judge Shaukat Ali declined his plea to extend bail in the case of sacking and detaining scores of judges of superior courts about six years ago.

With law enforcing authorities virtually paralysed by the dramatic turn of events and failing to arrest him, Musharraf’s security staff whisked him away from court premises. On reaching his farmhouse in Islamabad’s upscale Chak Shehzad neighbourhood, Musharraf was immediately closeted with his legal and political advisers for consultation on future course of action.

The counsel for the ex-dictator Ibrahim Satti later moved the Supreme Court against the high court order but the petition was not entertained as the court had adjourned for the day.

Musharraf faces a report lodged with the Islamabad police in August 2009 on orders by the Supreme Court in its ruling of July 31, 2009, annulling the imposition of emergency in November 2007 when also sacking of 60 judges of the superior courts, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

The episode electrified political scene in the country currently bracing for the elections next month. While the caretaker government faced hugely awkward choices on how to respond, the involvement of a former ruler and Army Chief triggered intense debate in the country regarding its legal, political and strategic implications.

There were speculations that the government may declare Musharraf’s farmhouse sub-jail and confine him there. Instances of slain premier Benazir Bhutto and her spouse and current President Asif Zardari were cited in this context.

Top police officials in the capital were busy at a meeting deliberating on the situation. Legal experts said if they decide to confine Musharraf at his farmhouse, he will have to be produced before a magistrate and explain the security concerns necessitating house detention instead of sending him to jail.

Musharraf’s act of escape from the court without offering himself for arrest was interpreted variously by lawyers and politicians. Eminent jurist Aitzaz Ahsan, who had successfully led lawyers’ movement against Musharraf in 2007, dubbed him as “fugitive from law”.

But another leader of the movement, Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmud disagreed saying that th]e court had only cancelled the bail but did not order his arrest. “The police would have been perfectly within ambit of law if it arrested him in court premises or at his farmhouse”, he said.

Musharraf’s lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasur said he could not be treated as an ordinary criminal. He said the military would not allow its former commander to be treated with indignity and humiliation. 

Caretaker Information Minister Arif Nizami said the government was disturbed over the spike in election-related violence.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim has written to top political leaders reaffirming the commitment to provide them security in the run up to the elections.

The CEC also refuted reports that he has directed the interim administration to reduce security personnel protecting top leaders, including those of the Awami Nation Party (ANP), which is worst hit by the Taliban in troubled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Meanwhile, Nizami said maintaining law and order in the country before 
general elections was top agenda for the caretaker federal Cabinet meeting 
on Wednesday.

The meeting decided to bring in all available resources, including the deployment of army, to improve security.

It was the second Cabinet meeting of the caretakers who, unlike their first sitting on April 5, wore a sombre look due to Tuesday’s bombing of two election rallies in Khuzdar and Peshawar that killed 31 persons. The ministers expressed fear that if the government failed to provide adequate security to voters, they would not come out on the day of voting.

“This will put a question mark over credibility of the elections,” said Nizami.

In Khuzdar (Balochistan), the PML-N’s provincial chief lost his brother, son and a nephew, while in Peshawar, former railway minister Haji Ghulam Ahmad Bilour narrowly escaped a suicide bombing in which 15 persons lost their lives.

Nizami said the government was disturbed over the spike in election-related violence. Asked how the government would react if some political parties decided to boycott elections, Nizami said no major party had given any such indication.

The information minister dismissed allegations that the government was discriminating in providing security to political leaders.

“Their security has just been rationalised on the basis of security threats they are facing,” he said. To a questioner who sought the minister’s attention towards proceedings of the Senate during which some senators have accused the Election Commission of “unnecessarily targeting politicians”, he said the government cannot direct the ECP what to do and what not to do because of its independent status.

Nizami also refused to buy the argument that the establishment was stoking security concerns before elections in order to derail democracy. “We shouldn’t doubt their intentions as they want democracy to flourish,” he said. 

Boston, April 18
President Barack Obama told a memorial service for the Boston bombing victims that "we will find" whoever carried out the attack that killed three persons as investigators search for two men seen on a video of the scene shortly before the blasts. 

Obama said Americans would not be intimidated by the twin blasts, which also injured 176 persons in a crowd of thousands at the finish line of the world-famous marathon on Monday. "If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorise us, to shake us from those values ... that define us as Americans, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it to. Not here in Boston," Obama said at the memorial on Thursday. 

While investigators have made no arrests yet, Obama said of the perpetrators of the attack, "We will find you and you will face justice." 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano earlier on Thursday in Washington confirmed that the FBI was searching for people seen on a video taken near the finish line. "There is some video that has raised the question of those that the FBI would like to speak with," Napolitano said in Congressional testimony. 

"I wouldn't characterise them as suspects under the technical term. But we do need the public's help in locating these individuals." The Boston bombings put Americans on edge and security was tightened in major cities across the US. — Reuter

Washington, April 18
The FBI has arrested a suspect in the state of Mississippi for sending letters to US President Barack Obama and a Senator laced with the deadly poison ricin.

The suspect, Paul Kevin Curtis (45), was arrested by the FBI yesterday at his residence in Corinth, responsible for the mailings of the three letters sent through the US Postal Service which contained a granular substance that preliminarily tested positive for ricin.

The letters were addressed to the US President, Senator Roger Wicker and a Mississippi justice official.

The individual was arrested following an investigation conducted by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi, the US Capitol Police, and other federal and local agencies.

The FBI said that there is no connection between blasts at the Boston marathon that took three lives and mailings sent to the US President and other leaders.

According to a local television network, the letter said the person who wrote it said that they tried to talk to someone and that no one would listen and now someone must die.

The letter was reportedly signed with the same signature as the two letters sent to Obama and Wicker. — PTI 

Houston, April 18
An estimated five to 15 people were killed and up to 160 injured when a devastating blast, likened to a "nuclear bomb", ripped through a fertilizer plant that forced authorities to evacuate half the residents of a small Texas town in the US on Thursday.

Tommy Muska, the Mayor of the town of West, said, "It was like a nuclear bomb went off". "Big old mushroom cloud." "There are a lot of people that got hurt. There are a lot of people that will not be here tomorrow," Muska said.

Sgt William Patrick Swanton of the nearby Waco Police Department said between five and 15 people had died while George Smith, the emergency management system director of the city, said fire officials fear that the number of casualties could rise as high as 60 to 70 dead.

The United States Geological Survey said the explosion last night at the West Fertilizer plant shook houses 50 miles away and measured as a 2.1-magnitude seismic event.

What caused the blast was not immediately known, CNN reported.

West, a township of mostly Czech immigrants, is a community of about 2,800 people, about 130 kilometres south of Dallas.

Authorities are going door to door in the area checking on residents.

The blast knocked out power to a large area surrounding the plant.

A member of the city council, Al Vanek, said there is a four-block area around the explosion "that is totally decimated." Department of Public Safety spokesman D L Wilson said the damage was comparable to the destruction caused by the 1995 bomb blast that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Muska said that about six firefighters were unaccounted for and that 131 people were safely evacuated from a local nursing home, according to Waco Tribune. — PTI