3:13 AM
ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, heading the eight-member hearing Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s intra-court appeal on Thursday, remarked that the appeal itself was in contempt of the court.
Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, representing Prime Minister Gilani in his contempt of court case, appeared before Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry nearly after five years.
During the hearing, Justice Saqib Nisar directed Ahsan to remove ‘objectionable’ paragraphs from his appeal.
The chief justice questioned Ahsan on how he could include paragraphs in his appeal which say that the contempt case cannot be initiated against a prime minister who helped in restoring the judges.
Ahsan, in reply, said that even if a contempt case was initiated against him, keeping in view his struggles for the restoration of the judges, he would have taken the same stance.
However, three objectionable points from the intra-court appeal were removed on the court’s insistence.
The eight-judge bench appeared intransigent that the government must respond to its request in December 2009 to re-open corruption cases.
President Asif Ali Zardari and his late wife, prime minister Benazir Bhutto, were suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to launder about $12 million in alleged bribes paid by companies seeking customs inspection contracts in Pakistan in the 1990s.
The chief justice insisted the prime minister should have taken the initiative in re-opening those cases. The court said it had shown patience in the two years and three months since it ordered that the matter be taken up with the Swiss.
Ahsan pointed out that the Swiss authorities had themselves closed the cases in 2008, when Zardari took office, on the grounds of immunity, and that there was no third party to claim the funds.
“The prime minister should not be the person to undermine any institution. This money will not come to our pockets. Actually it is the nation which wants this money,” the chief justice said.
The bench was formed on Wednesday after Ahsan filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against its order of filing charges against the prime minister.
None of the seven judges, who had summoned the prime minister on February 13 for the framing of charges, are part of the bench hearing appeal against their order.
Posted in: NATIONAL
