A special Peshawar court in Pakistan on Tuesday, December 17, sentenced former president retired General Pervez Musharraf to death in a long-drawn high treason case against him. A three-member bench of the special court awarded death penalty to retired former military dictator General. Two out of the three judges were in favour of capital punishment.
A special court was constituted by then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif to try Musharraf for high treason after the later was charged with abrogating the Constitution twice.
The bench comprising Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court Waqar Seth, Justice Nazar Akbar of the Sindh High Court and Justice Shahid Karim of the Lahore High Court said that they will issue a detailed judgment in the next two days.
The high treason case
The high treason trial of the retired General for clamping the state of emergency on November 3, 2007, had been pending since December 2013. The treason case was filed against the former president by the PML-N government in 2013. He was booked in the treason case in December 2013.
Musharraf was indicted on March 31, 2014, and the prosecution had tabled the entire evidence before the special court in September the same year.
Pervez Musharraf, who now lives in Dubai, ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008.
Last month, a video went viral in which Pervez Musharraf spoke about rather admitted to training Kashmiri militants to fight against the Indian Army, according to reports. Citing an unverified video clip, news agency ANI reported that Musharraf called terrorists like Osama bin Laden and Jalaluddin Haqqani "Pakistani heroes".
(With agency inputs)
