The Pakistan government has released 3,416 people including lawyers and political activists jailed during Emergency rule.
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government has released 3,416 people including lawyers and political activists jailed during Emergency rule in a sign that President Pervez Musharraf was reversing course even as the schedule for January 8 general elections was announced on Tuesday.
The commencement of the release came in tandem with govenment also saying today that former Supreme Court judges sacked by Musharraf and held under house arrest during emergency rule were 'free to move.'
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema while announcing the release at a news conference said another 2,000 prisoners will be freed soon. The cases of some facing criminal charges could take longer, he said.
The development came hours after Musharraf's hand-picked Supreme Court cleared all the major legal challenges to Musharaff's re-election as President but as a civilian and amid mounting US pressure for restoration of civil liberties.
Responding to a question about deposed judges of the Supreme Court, he said they are "free to go to their homes if they so desire". He said they were living in their official residences here at "their own choice".
But the families of sacked judges, including former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, claimed that police outside their houses were barring them from going out.
Pakistan's Election Commission announced the poll schedule but opposition parties said they were mulling a boycott as polls held in a state of emergency would not be free and fair.
Meanwhile in Karachi, police detained about 150 journalists Tuesday after clashing with them duing a protest against Emergency rule. A few reporters were reportedly injured. Police also detained 23 journalists after they tried to hold rally in the southern city of Hyderabad to protest press restrictions.
Musharraf will doff his uniform before taking oath for a second five-year term in keeping with an undertaking he had submitted to the Supreme Court last month, the top government lawyer said.
The official notification of the result of the October 6 presidential election, which the General swept amid an opposition boycott, could be issued only after the Supreme Court decides on all the petitions challenging Musharraf's candidature, Attorney General Malik Qayyum said.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing of petitions opposing the emergency imposed by Musharraf, he said the military ruler would quit the post of Army Chief in keeping with his undertaking to the apex court.
The Supreme Court barred the Election Commission from notifying the result of the Presidential poll. As a result, he could not be sworn in for a second five-year term.
Meanwhile, several leaders of Pakistan's lawyers' associations, which have been at the forefront of protests against Musharraf for months, vowed on their release fom jail that they would continue their campaign against the emergency and for the restoration of ousted judges.
"We are chalking out strategy for the next phase ... The lawyers community will not give up," said Hafiz Lakho, a senior lawyer in Karachi.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan meanwhile will continue his hunger strike in jail till Pakistan judges deposed under the emergency are reinstated, his Tehreek-e-Insaf party said .
Khan is currently being held in the Dera Ghazi Khan Jail in Punjab province, where he was taken shortly after he was arrested in Lahore last week.
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