Pak judiciary falls under the shadow of gun

Pakistan's legal community is living in constant fear of attacks from extremist Muslim groups, a leading human rights lawyer said.

Asma Jehangir's statement comes a day after former judge Arif Iqbal Hussain Bhatti was gunned down in his Lahore office in a suspected revenge killing.

"I receive threats constantly, and so do many others,'' said Jehangir, a founding member of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission.

A lone gunman had walked into Justice Bhatti's office, pulled out a pistol and fired several shots at close range. No one has taken responsibility for the shooting.

Police suspect the killing may have been in retaliation for a 1995 judgement wherein Bhatti acquitted two Christian brothers. They were accused of writing graffiti against Prophet Mohammed. The ruling sparked violent protests from extremist Sunni Muslim groups -- so much so that the brothers had to be whisked out of the country to Germany.

Jehangir was the lawyer for the Christian brothers. Since then, she and Justice Bhatti have been receiving regular faxed threats from Sunni Muslim extremist groups, she said. These often included names, addresses and phone numbers of the senders.

"The messages often dared me to send the police after them,'' the lawyer said.

Jehangir had turned in the messages to the police. "But there was never any investigation," she said.

This, she alleged, was because of the links between the heavily armed and well-funded extremists and the senior members of Pakistan's judiciary and police force.

"Justice Bhatti's killers can be arrested easily, but the police will never do it,'' she said.

Pakistani authorities, meanwhile, have provided Jehangir a bodyguard. "But I still feel threatened and unsafe,'' she said.

Religious violence has always plagued Islamic Pakistan, home to 140 million people. This year, about 200 people have died in sectarian attacks -- mostly in Punjab, involving Sunni and Shiite groups -- so far.

Consequently, the government has deployed thousands of paramilitary troops to patrol cities and towns in Punjab province. It also adopted a strict anti-terrorism bill that gives police sweeping powers. Yet, the threat continues.

UNI