Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has accused the President and the government of trying to subvert the course of justice by supporting “biased” SJC judges.

The larger 5-member bench will begin regular hearing of the petition on day-to-day basis from Monday.

In response to President’s objection that the CJP’s petition tainted judges’ image, the rejoinder said that there was no question of ‘scandalisation or humiliation’ of the judges.

“Such assertions of disqualification and bias have been preferred in other cases as well and have been adjudicated upon in open courts,” says the rejoinder.

The rejoinder states that the respondents want to subvert the course of justice instead of advising “biased judges” to withdraw from the reference hearing. It says that preliminary objections, raised by the president and the government, are misconceived.

The points raised in previous petitions regarding the competence and the composition of the SJC like “personal bias, career advancement, financial interests, prejudice, collateral purpose, undue haste, illegal suspension, restraint, forced leave, illegal appointment of an acting chief justice and illegal in-camera proceedings” are all reiterated in the rejoinder.

The rejoinder also says the government’s ‘bad faith’ was revealed by the fact that it opposed a full court for the petition’s hearing in the beginning, but later took a U-turn and called for a full court.

“It may be added that there is no question of seniority in the SC as has been asserted in government’s petition. Each judge is equal and has equal judicial discretion,” it says.

To the accusation that the CJP has tried to ‘politicise’ the case, the rejoinder says that the CJP has led no political rally and made no political speech.

“He has not gone to any politician or sought any political support from anyone. If political parties are as agitated as lawyers and people at the conduct of the president, it is not because of the petitioner. The CJP has only shown courtesy of meeting the people who came to his residence to meet him,” it says.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and most federal ministers have virtually distanced themselves from the current judicial crisis leaving Gen Pervez Musharraf to fend for himself in this gruelling battle that has directly challenged his own rule.

This is what the senior journalists and analysts appearing in various TV talk shows feel about the situation.

They have also described outpouring of popular sentiments against Musharraf during Chief Justice Iftikhar's marathon journey from Islamabad to Lahore on Saturday as harbinger of a change in the present political system lorded over by Musharraf.

Though president Musharraf has been drubbing the theme that it was Shaukat Aziz who initiated the reference and he acted according to the Constitution to pass it on to the Supreme Judicial Council, he finds few takers of this claim.

Most analysts believe that the President's aides are authors of the reference at his direction and Aziz simply signed the document.

The Prime Minister has rarely spoken about it since the beginning of this situation while most of the ministers have kept a discreet silence, much Musharraf’s ire.

Pakistan is still relying largely on illicit sources and smuggling routes to maintain its nuclear weapons making capability, Mark Fitzpatrick, editor of a research dossier Nuclear markets: Pakistan, A. Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks - a net assessment” has alleged.

The dossier was launched in London Wednesday at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), UK’s leading think tank.

Fitzpatrick said Pakistan was facing serious restrictions at the international level by the countries producing and exporting nuclear technology and raw materials.

"Khan's associates appeared to have escaped law enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black market business", he said.

Answering a question on how much did Dr Khan make from his ‘private’ nuclear enterprise, the editor of the dossier said he had information about $100 million only which he was said to have received from Libya.

The dossier said if anyone can claim the title of “Father of the Pakistani bomb”, it should be former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on the political side and Munir Ahmad Khan on the technical side. Dr AQ Khan is wrongly given this credit.

“Dr AQ Khan is not the father of the Pakistan bomb. It is ZA Bhutto,” it said, focusing on the efforts of Bhutto since 1958, when he became a minister in the Ayub cabinet.

Egypt, May 6
A plane belonging to the multinational observer force that used to monitor the Egyptian-Israeli border, crashed in the Sinai peninsula today.

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank, Dr Muhammad Yunus, in an open letter at the week-end announced that he is withdrawing from his efforts to form a new political party in Bangladesh.

Dr Yunus' retreat from the political battle-field comes less than three months after his first open letter of February 11 in which he solicited public opinion as to whether to enter the fray, and his second letter, dated February 22, in which he announced that he had taken the decision to form a new political party, Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power).

In yesterday's open letter, which comes as a bitter blow for his supporters and other reformists, the Nobel laureate pointed to his inability to put together a strong team to join him in his efforts to form a new party and suggested that many of those he had hoped would join with him had, in the final analysis, not come forward.

"Even with all my efforts, I was not able to form the kind of team that I had hoped to, and it was my sense that even if I continued to wait, I still would not be successful," Dr Yunus wrote.

"It is in consideration of this reality that I have made my decision not to go on with my efforts."

Dr Yunus initially announced his intention to join politics one month into the state of emergency imposed on January 11, that has seen Bangladesh governed by an interim caretaker government backed by the military.

The military-backed interim government, which took over the reins in order to forestall elections scheduled for January 22 that were widely anticipated to be fraudulent, has vowed to shake up Bangladeshi politics and to institute wide-ranging reforms.

To this end, over 100,000 have reportedly been jailed since January 11, including dozens of senior leaders from the country's main two political parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Awami League (AL), which have ruled the country in turn since the advent of democracy in 1991.

With the AL and BNP in serious disarray due to the anti-crime and anti-corruption drives initiated by the caretaker government, Dr Yunus' announcement that he will not be entering politics has thrown a twist into the on-going efforts to reform the political processes of the country ranked the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International five times in a row.

But with Dr Yunus announcing his withdrawal from the field, a potential vacuum has been created in the polity and the effect that his decision will have on the on-going efforts to reform Bangladesh's dysfunctional democracy and rein in the two major parties remains uncertain.

King Gyanendra and his relatives owe over Rs 33 million as unpaid electricity bills to the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) for the last 18 months till January 2007, said a report posted by The Kathmandu Post, a leading English Daily newspaper in Nepal.

The figure includes unpaid bills of nine residences of the royal family and royal relatives in the capital. All of them stopped paying their electricity bills altogether a few months after the bloodless military coup on February 1, 2005.

The figure, however, does not include unpaid bills of royal residences outside Kathmandu Valley, such as Ratna Mandir in Pokhara and Diyalo bungalow in Bharatpur.

Narayanhiti palace tops the list of defaulters with more than Rs 24.3 million in arrears, while Nagarjun palace owes NEA Rs 2.4 million.

Similarly, Nirmal Niwas has not paid over Rs 2.3 million, while Chaunni bungalow owes the state utility Rs 1.5 million, the Post quoted an NEA source as saying.

Likewise, King Gyanendra's aunt Helen Shah owes Rs 551,000 in unpaid electricity bills, the late Dhirendra Shah's daughter Pooja Rajya Laxmi Shah owes Rs 505,000, Helen Shah's daughter Jyotsana Rajya Laxmi Devi Basnet owes Rs 477,000, the late Prekshya Rajya Laxmi Shah has to pay Rs 412,000 and Bharati Rajya Laxmi Singh owes Rs 256,000, the report said.

In the past, the royals used to pay the utility bills for their residences in Kathmandu and outside. However, they stopped paying at various points in time after the royal takeover.

Since July 2005, none of them has paid any electricity bill. They have continued to default on payment even after the regime change last year.

"After the success of the April movement last year, we have been regularly sending the cumulative electricity bills to the palace as well as to the royal relatives. But none of them have responded, let alone pay," said a NEA official preferring anonymity.

"Considering their profile, we cannot take measures such as discontinuing power supply," he said.

In fact, these residences did not have to face a minute of power cut even when the whole country went through up to 17 hours of load-shedding per week as recently as two months ago.

After the restoration of democracy in April 2006, the then House of Representatives on May 18, 2006 had decided to cut off all powers and privileges from the 238-years old monarchy and decided to slap income taxes to the king and royal family members like any commoners.

Jerusalem, May 6
Two Israeli human rights groups today accused the country’s internal security agency of employing “irregular” interrogation methods on Palestinian detainees, which in some cases amounted to “torture”.

The joint report by B’Tselem and HaMoked Centre for the Defence of the Individual is based on testimony of 73 Palestinians arrested between July 2005 and March 2006.

The report claimed that “special interrogation methods” which could be considered as torture, are not employed frequently but used according to standing regulations.

It cited beating, painful binding, back bending, prolonged sleep deprivation, swearing, humiliation and denial of basic needs as ways of abuse detainees had to face from the moment of their arrest to their transfer to the Shin Beth internal security service for interrogation.

Such measures “are defined by international law as ill-treatment and may reach the level of torture,” the two NGOs said and alleged that these methods are used to break the spirits of prisoners under questioning, which is in violation of High Court rulings regulating conduct of interrogations.

A range of other practices employed routinely may degenerate into torture, the report said.

The groups urged Shin Beth to immediately stop using interrogation techniques “that injure the dignity or physical integrity” of detainees and demanded a legislation to ban such practices.

The Israeli Justice Ministry dismissed the report saying the Shin Beth investigations are performed in accordance with the law. — PTI