Islamabad, October 26: A grand assembly of Islamic scholars in Pakistan has issued a death decree against former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, requiring him to be killed under Islamic laws for his crimes against humanity and Islam.
The decree holds Musharraf, who is currently living in self-exile in London, as a “criminal of Islam and Pakistan” liable to be killed by any Muslim whosoever finds him. In addition to that, a reward money of $1.3 million was also announced by Nawab Talal Akbar Bugti, the chief of the Bugti tribe in Pakistan’s eastern province of Balochistan, whose father Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed in a 2006 military operation launched by Gen. Musharraf to crush his political opponents.
The religious decree (fatwa) was issued by around 50 noted scholars from all schools of thought who converged on the invitation of Bugti in his hometown in Balochistan. The fatwa held Musharraf guilty of a variety of crimes like desecration the Quran and the killing of hundreds of female students Islamic jurisprudence in Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad in a military operation.
The list of crimes the assembly found Musharraf guilty of also included murder of political opponents like Nawab Akbar Bugti, Betraying Dr. Aafia Siddiqi and thousands of other Muslims to Washington for money, handing over Afghan ambassador Mulla Abdus Salam Zaeef to Washington in violation of international laws and Islamic norms, scrapping Quran laws like Hudood Ordinance from Pakistan’s constitution, jailing the father of country’s nuclear program Dr. Abdul Khan allegedly to please Washington and disregarding the constitution which amounts to high treason under Pakistani law.
The speakers on the occasion also held the present PPP-led coalition government as guilty in Musharraf’s crimes since they not only allowed him to go free by seeing him off from the Presidential residence with a Guard of Honor, but also by continuing his policies.
The assembly also demanded that Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of Musharraf’s crimes and begin proceedings against him for treason.
-Agencies