Islamabad, December 18: Pakistan’s Supreme Court bans the country’s defense minister from leaving Pakistan as arrest warrants have been issued against 252 beneficiaries of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar was on his way to China with Pakistan’s naval chief for an official visit when he was stopped at Islamabad International Airport, a Press TV correspondent reported late on Thursday.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday invalidated an amnesty protecting the president and senior ministers, including Mukhtar, from corruption charges and put them on the Exit Control List (ECL).
President Asif Ali Zardari is immune from prosecution while still in office. But the Supreme Court hearing has churned up details of Zardari’s alleged personal fortune. The president’s public rating has plummeted and the opposition is demanding his resignation.
On the orders of the Supreme Court, the bank accounts of many of the beneficiaries have been frozen and their properties seized.
Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has sent a notice to all provincial director generals, prosecutor generals and district prosecutors to reopen all cases against NRO beneficiaries in compliance with court orders.
The NRO was an ordinance issued by former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf on Oct. 5, 2007. It granted amnesty to politicians, political workers and bureaucrats who were accused of corruption, embezzlement, money-laundering, murder and terrorism between January 1, 1986 and October 12, 1999.
——-Agencies