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Pakistan court issues arrest warrant for interior minister after amnesty struck down

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] A Pakistani court on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Interior Minister Rehman Malik on corruption charges, following Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling striking down an amnesty order. The Supreme Court ruled that the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which granted immunity to President Asif Ali Zardari and 8,000 other government officials from the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), is unconstitutional. Malik is among 19 officials whose corruption cases the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has petitioned to reopen in an anti-corruption court in Rawalpindi. The NAB has also petitioned a Lahore court to reopen the cases of 32 individuals, including that of Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar. That court has already issued three notices to appear, including one to PPP secretary general Jahangir Badr. The NAB has banned 247 individuals from leaving the country, including Malik and Mukhtar, and Mukhtar was prevented from going on an official visit to China Thursday night. Zardari called an emergency meeting of Pakistan's top ministers Friday to discuss the current political situation. The court began hearing the legal challenge to the NRO earlier this month. The NRO was signed by former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in 2007 as part of a power-sharing accord allowing former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto to return to the country despite corruption charges she had faced. The ordinance also applies to similar charges against politicians who were charged, but not convicted, of corruption between 1988 and 1999.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on December 18, 2009 (boomark / email).