Pakistan court declares Musharraf ‘fugitive from justice’

A Pakistani court declared the country’s former president Pervez Musharraf, who is being tried on charges of treason, as a fugitive from justice on Wednesday, almost two months after the exmilitary ruler left the country for medical treatment abroad.

The special court, headed by judge Mian Mazhar Alam Khel, took the decision after Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said that Musharraf was not in either of his houses in Karachi and Islamabad, local television network Geo reported.

FIA was ordered to present Musharraf before the court within a period of 30 days.

The court also ruled that posters of the former general and advertisements in newspapers must be put up to inform the public that he has run away.

Musharraf left for Dubai on Mar. 18 for medical treatment with the promise of returning in a few months.

The Supreme Court allowed him to do so following a threeyear ban imposed on him by the government on leaving the country.

The treason case against the former general, who ruled for over a decade after a coup in 1999, was opened at the behest of the government after he suspended the constitutional order and ordered the arrest of dozens of judges in 2007, during a showdown with the judiciary.

Musharraf, only one of the four military dictators in Pakistan to have been arrested, tried to resurrect his political career three years ago by returning to the country to participate in the general elections, but was eventually arrested.