By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, Pakistan
A Pakistani court on Wednesday indicted the country’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf and two others in the murder case of the former chief minister of the southwestern Baluchistan province.
Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a Baluch nationalist leader, was allegedly killed in a military operation ordered by Musharraf in 2006.
The judge of an anti-terrorist court in Baluchistan’s state capital Quetta indicted General Musharraf in absentia.
His lawyer claimed that the former military ruler could not appear before the court due to illness. The court rejected the defense counsel’s argument after the prosecution highlighted that while Musharraf had continuously avoided court appearances he was regularly appearing on TV channels.
Bugti was a popular leader in Baluchistan, a mineral-rich area where several separatist groups haved demanded autonomy from Pakistan since the partition of British India in 1947.
Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008 after toppling the elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is reportedly suffering from cardiac arrest with no history of any heart disease.
He has also been charged in the murder cases of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Islamabad’s Red Mosque cleric Ghazi Abdul Rasheed. He is on bail in these cases.
