Pakistan’s ex-military dictator Musharraf given death penalty

Bloomberg

A Pakistani special court sentenced former military dictator and president Pervez Musharraf to death in absentia, ending a six-year long high treason case against him and delivering a historic verdict against the country’s powerful army.
In a two-to-one majority, the three-member special court headed by judge Waqar Ahmad Seth announced the verdict, Musharraf’s spokesman Mohammad Amjad said by phone on Tuesday.
Musharraf has the right to appeal in the Supreme Court, according to former attorney general Ashtar Ausaf. “We’ll definitely challenge it in the Supreme Court,” Musharraf’s lawyer Raza Bashir said on the television channel Samaa, expressing concern the verdict was given in hurry and his client didn’t get fair trial.
It is the first time in Pakistan’s 72-year history that a military ruler has been tried with high treason —in this case for imposing emergency rule and suspending the constitution in 2007. Musharraf, as the army chief, toppled the civilian government of ex-premier Nawaz Sharif in 1999 and later became the country’s military president. The south Asian nation has a history of being ruled by army dictators, who have imposed four martial laws since independence from the UK in 1947.

Historic Verdict
The verdict will “have a major positive impact on democracy and the rule of law as after decades, a person has been tried and sentenced,” Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, said in Islamabad. “It will have a deterrent value.”
Musharraf was a key ally of the US after the September 11 attacks in New York until he was forced to step down in 2008 to avoid impeachment by Parliament. Sharif began treason proceedings against Musharraf soon after he came back to power in 2013.
Pakistan’s biggest political parties, whose government’s have been toppled at least once in past by military dictators, welcomed the verdict.
“The verdict is historic and it will be welcomed by all democratic forces,” said Ahsan Iqbal, a senior leader of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party. “Democracy is the best revenge,” tweeted Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is the co-chief of Pakistan Peoples Party, echoing his mother’s comments before she was slain in a terrorist attack in 2007.