Sacked CJ prevented from attending Eid prayers

Pakistan's deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was on Friday prevented by the police from going out of his residence in Islamabad for Eid prayers.

Chaudhry, under house arrest since he was sacked by President Pervez Musharraf on November 3, had obtained permission to join the special Eid-ul-Azha prayers, but was barred from stepping out of his official residence in the Judges Colony after a large group of his supporters and civil society activists tried to meet him in the morning.

The deposed judge's family and servants were also not allowed to leave the house, eyewitnesses said.

A large police contingent did not allow Chaudhry's supporters, civil society activists and lawyers to cross barbwire barricades at the Judges Colony. The group had planned to join Chaudhry for the Eid prayers.

After offering prayers on a road near the Judges Colony, the group shouted slogans against the government and demanded the reinstatement of judges who were sacked for not endorsing the emergency imposed by Musharraf in November.

Musharraf, who lifted the emergency on December 15, has said that Chaudhry was involved in a 'conspiracy' to remove him and asserted that the judges will not be reinstated.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan, who was on Thursday released from detention for three days for the Eid holidays, was re-arrested in Rawalpindi late on Thursday while driving from Lahore to Islamabad.

Ahsan, who played a key role in organising protests by the legal fraternity against Musharraf's regime, was arrested hours after the imposition of emergency.

He was initially held in a jail in Rawalpindi before being placed under house arrest in his home in Lahore.

Shortly after his release on Thursday, Ahsan had vowed to organise fresh protests by the legal fraternity if the deposed judges were not reinstated by the new parliament to be formed after the January 8 general election.

Ahsan's son Ali Ahsan, who was with him when he was re-arrested, told Dawn News channel that policemen ill-treated and humiliated his father. Ali said the policemen used force when Ahsan asked them to produce the arrest order.

The policemen pointed their AK-47 rifles at Ahsan and said the weapons were the 'arrest order', Ali alleged. They broke Ahsan's spectacles and tore his shirt while pulling him out of his car and bundling him into a van, he added.