Pakistan releases dossier against deposed CJ

Pakistan has prepared a 15-page dossier against deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar M Chaudhry in a bid to make the Western media aware of the "real" causes behind the government-judiciary standoff in the country.

The document against Chaudhry, currently under house arrest in Islamabad, was given to top journalists of London who attended a breakfast meeting with President Pervez Musharraf on Monday during his three-day visit to the UK on the last leg of his four-nation European tour.

Musharraf's spokesman Maj Gen (Retd) Rashid Qureshi said the document was distributed to the journalists to inform them of the "real situation" regarding the judicial crisis in Pakistan.

Qureshi said a lot was being written in the Western press about the judicial crisis in Pakistan and an attempt was made to apprise journalists about the real causes of the crisis.

The dossier, in which Musharraf defended his decision to sack Chaudhry for alleged corruption and nepotism, provoked an angry response from the deposed judge, who sent an open letter to several world leaders describing the Pakistan President as an "extremist general"

Chaudhry, in his letter which was released to media in Islamabad on Wednesday also accused the President of subverting the judicial system.

The allegations levelled against Chaudhry in the document given to British journalists were of judicial activism, nepotism, frequent interaction with the Pakistani media, intelligence chiefs, military officers and politicians, and harassing the civilian bureaucracy.

Officials told The News daily that the document was an attempt to counter "sheer propaganda" and "false" claims by Chaudhry's camp in the foreign press.

The dossier repeated several of the allegations made against Chaudhry when Musharraf suspended him in March last year. Chaudhry was reinstated by a full bench of the Supreme Court before being sacked by Musharraf.