Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf arrested in new case over Red Mosque raid

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Just a day after being released on bail, police once again arrested former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday, his spokesman and lawyer said.

The former general has faced a roller coaster ride of legal troubles since his return to Pakistan in March after four years of self-exile.

The fact that he is facing charges has undermined the once-inviolable position held by the powerful military in Pakistani society.

Musharraf appeared to get a respite from his legal problems Wednesday when a Pakistani court granted him bail in one of three cases in which he had been arrested.

Since he had already been given bail in the other two cases, it was thought that he would be released from house arrest as soon as the paperwork was filed, his lawyers said at the time. They even spoke of him going to visit his ailing mother in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

But Mohammad Amjad, a spokesman for Musharraf, said police arrested him Thursday in connection with the death of a radical cleric who was killed during a raid on a hard-line mosque in Islamabad in 2007.

“It is part of a political victimization and nothing else, but we will continue our legal battle to win freedom for Pervez Musharraf,” Amjad said.

A lawyer for Musharraf, Ahmed Raza Qasuri, confirmed the arrest but said there was no evidence against his client.

“It was a state action, a military action,” Qasuri said.

The other cases against him have to do with the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the killing of a Baluch separatist leader by the army and the detention of Pakistani judges in 2007.

Musharraf ordered the raid against the Red Mosque after students there had begun harassing massage parlors, music stores and other targets that they felt promoted vulgarity.

People holed up in the mosque and fought for days. The raid ended with nearly 100 people dead, including at least 10 army commandos. The army seized a large cache of arms from the mosque when the siege ended.

But the incident severely damaged Musharraf’s reputation among citizens and earned him the undying hatred of militants who launched a series of punishing attacks after the raid.

In other developments, at least seven people were killed in separate bombings in the southwestern city of Quetta and the eastern city of Lahore, police said.

In the most deadly incident, six people died when a bomb exploded outside a police station in Quetta, police official Mohammed Mohsin saud. In Lahore, one person was killed when a bomb exploded in a busy market, police official Raj Tahir said.

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