Eminent jurist and retired Supreme Court judge, Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim told the full court bench of the SC Wednesday that Gen. Musharraf is not validly elected President hence he does not enjoy any immunity or exemption from his actions being challenged in a court of law.

Ibrahim appeared on behalf of Balochistan High Court Bar Association before the 13-member bench which is currently hearing suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry's and other petitions challenging the legality of the presidential reference against Justice Chaudhry.

Ibrahim said Gen. Musharraf's anointed himself as President through a fraudulent referendum which had no provision in the Constitution. He regretted that the Supreme Court deferred its judgment on a petition challenging the validity of the referendum by terming it as premature.

He said even the verdict that had validated Musharraf's 1999 coup allowed him a limited authority to conduct day to day business of the state but he deviated from the judgment and imposed himself as president.

The 17th Amendment too had no constitutional validity in indemnifying the referendum and other amendments made by Musharraf under the Legal Framework Order, he said.

He urged the court to realise that a defining moment has arrived when the court freed itself from shackles and refused to sanction any unconstitutional acts of military usurpers.

Ibrahim said Musharraf had no power to suspend the Chief Justice or send any guidance for his impeachment.

In some related developments, the Acting Chief Justice Javed Iqbal admitted a government application and formed a two-judge panel to hear its complaint that Saturday's national seminar at the SC auditorium violated directives not to indulge in any political activity or scandalise anybody.

The interior ministry in its complaint said speakers made inflammatory speeches against President Musharraf while the audience shouted slogans using abusive language against him, the armed forces and judiciary. The panel will begin hearing on the complaint from today (Thursday).

In Karachi, judges of the Sindh High Court declined to hear Governor Ishrat Ibad on the May 12 carnage in Karachi. The Governor visited the court in continuation of his efforts to restore calm in the city. When he tried to explain events of May 12, Chief Justice Sabihuddin reminded him that a larger bench of the court is already seized of the matter and started probe into the killings.

In another episode, a session judge of Karachi overturned decision by a police officer to file a complaint against senior police and administration officials of the city for failure to prevent riots and encirclement of high court on the fateful day.

Meanwhile police has claimed to have arrested four alleged killers of Supreme Court additional registrar, Hammad Raza, from Azad Kashmir. The counsel of the CJ had suspected that the murderers had physically eliminated a key defence witness. 

Senators belonging to the opposition in the upper house of parliament have moved an adjournment motion to debate the ‘shameful” remarks against Pak PM published in a biography of US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

The motion cites excerpts from the book, one of which quotes Rice as saying she ‘stared down” Aziz in her first meeting in March 2005 with the premier, who regarded himself as a lady killer and tried to charm her. The motion movers said the Prime Minister must personally respond to the motion in the upper house.

The senators noted that the author of a new biography on Rice claimed that the urbane premier puffed himself up and held forth in his “seductive baritone” but to little effect. “The way Aziz has been portrayed in the book is very shameful.”

Aziz “tried this Saville Row-suited gigolo kind of charm,” wrote Marcus Mabry, Newsweek magazine’s senior editor and author of the biography ‘Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and her Path to Power’.

“There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charm on her as a woman and she just basically stared him down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling,” Pakistani media quoted him as writing.

The motion further said Aziz was reported by the author to have bragged to Western diplomats that he could “conquer any woman in two minutes.” 

SRI Lankans may witness more violence as Tamil Tigers have started more attacks in and around Colombo in the past week which have left more than nine persons dead and wounded 50.

In the latest attack on Monday, eight persons, seven of them civilians, were killed when the Tigers set off a claymore mine targeting a bus carrying members of the elitist Special Task Force (STF) of the police.

The government was quick to blame the LTTE for the attack and the LTTE was quick in denying it. The attack prompted the military to launch a search operation the following day and take into custody at least 78 persons on grounds of suspicion.

President Mahinda Rajapakse, too, has warned that the attacks by the rebels are intend to create racial disharmony and civil unrest in the southern part of the country as the military tightens its grip on the LTTE strongholds in the eastern province.

The violence escalates as the government is facing an uphill task with major opposition parties criticising it for mishandling the economy, the war and pushing the country towards international isolation by disregarding concerns expressed over issues such as human rights and media freedom.