RAWALPINDI, Pakistan: A Pakistani court Tuesday indicted former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf on murder charges in connection with the 2007 assassination of iconic Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, deepening the fall of a once-powerful figure who returned to the country this year in an effort to take part in elections.

The decision by a court in Rawalpindi marks the first time Musharraf, or any former army chief in Pakistan, has been charged with a crime.

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup and stepped down from office in disgrace nearly a decade later, now faces a litany of legal problems that have in many ways broken taboos on the inviolability of the once-sacrosanct military in Pakistani society.

He has been charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and facilitation for murder, said prosecutor Chaudry Muhammed Azhar.

The former army commando appeared in person during the brief morning hearing, and pleaded not guilty, said Afsha Adil, a member of Musharraf’s legal team.

FILE – In this April 20, 2013, file photo, Pakistan’s former President and military ruler Pervez Mus …

Bhutto was killed in 2007 during a gun and bomb attack at a rally in the city of Rawalpindi, the sister city to the capital of Islamabad. Prosecutors have said Musharraf, who was president at the time, failed to properly protect her.

The judge set August 27 as the next court date to present evidence.

Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March after nearly four years outside the country and vowed to take part in the country’s May elections. But he has little popular support in Pakistan and ever since his return has faced a litany of legal problems related to his rule.

He has been confined to his house on the outskirts Islamabad as part of his legal problems, and was brought to court Tuesday amid tight security.

In addition to the Bhutto case, Musharraf is involved in a case related to the 2007 detention of judges and the death of a Baluch nationalist leader.

He’s also faced threats from the Pakistani Taliban who tried to assassinate him twice while he was in office and vowed to try again if he returned.

The attack at police headquarters in the southwestern city of Quetta was the latest in a series of attacks highlighting the major security challenges faced by a newly elected government.

The bomber struck as officers gathered to pay their respects to a colleague who had been shot dead only hours before in Quetta, capital of the troubled province of Baluchistan.

Fayaz Sumbal, a deputy inspector general of police and one of the most senior officers in Quetta, was among those killed.

“At least 38 people have been killed and more than 50 injured,” senior police official Mohammad Tariq said. “Most of the dead and injured are policemen.”

A son of the imam of the mosque at the police headquarters was among the dead, Doctor Syed Sarwar Shah said at one hospital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Quetta sits on the frontline of Islamist militant violence, a Baluch separatist insurgency and violence targeting the Shiite Muslim minority.

Police officer Rahim Khan had earlier put the death toll at 28 but warned that many of the injured were in a critical condition.

Police said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

In a travel warning, the state department said the presence of several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups posed a potential danger to US citizens throughout Pakistan.

The personnel drawdown at the Lahore consulate was a precautionary measure and wasn’t related to the recent closures of numerous US diplomatic missions in the Muslim world, two US officials said. The consulate in Lahore was scheduled to be closed for the Eid holiday from Thursday through on Sunday and no reopening had been scheduled, one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the order by name and requested anonymity.

Earlier this week, 19 US diplomatic outposts in 16 countries in the Middle East and Africa were closed to the public through Saturday and nonessential personnel were evacuated from the US embassy in Yemen after US intelligence officials said they had intercepted a recent message from al-Qaida’s top leader about plans for a major terror attack.

None of the consulates in Pakistan or the US embassy in Islamabad were affected by the earlier closures.

Parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the tribal areas were worst affected by the torrential rains, with as many as 13 reported dead and 34 injured in separate incidents yesterday, The Express Tribune reported on Saturday.

Six deaths were reported in Punjab, the paper said. Extensive property damage was reported from the country’s northern regions and residents in many areas were forced to leave their homes as rainwater inundated their homes.

More mass displacement is expected, as the water level continues to rise. Nearly 50,000 cusecs of water flowed into Warsak Dam yesterday, increasing its water level. Officials fear the flooding may reach Nowshera today.

According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), seven districts of KP, including Nowshera, Swat, Peshawar and Kohistan, are sensitive.

PDMA Director-General Atifur Rehman said tents, water and food supplies have been sent to these areas, but “the situation is something to worry about.”

As of now, Chitral district appeared to be the worst hit. Floods have claimed five lives since Thursday morning, as rainwater washed away dozens of houses and destroyed two bridges connecting the Kalash valley to Upper Chitral. A minor girl was also reported injured in the district.

Talking to reporters while visiting the affected areas, Chitral deputy commissioner Shoaib Jadoon said rains and flash floods destroyed at least 60 houses in the district.

Unofficially, however, the figure was as high as 120. At least 45 of these houses belonged to the Bamboret valley.

Communications and water and electricity supply systems in the entire district were severely disrupted as well.

Jadoon added that the district administration has launched rescue efforts and moved flood victims to safer ground in Chitral city.

Four people were killed in Bagh in PoK when their vehicle was swept off the road by flash floods. Another man reportedly drowned in Bagh’s Ghaniabad area. Seventeen more people were also reported injured across PoK.

The heavy downpour also caused millions of rupees worth of property damage in the region, destroying commercial and residential buildings as well as crops.

A boy and his mother were killed in Bajaur Agency, as the roof of their house collapsed due to the heavy downpour.

In a similar incident, a man was killed and his father critically injured in Peshawar district when the roof of the room they were in collapsed.

Two children were killed in Timergara when a landslide struck their house. Rainfall also demolished the wall of a mosque in Karak city, injuring five worshippers.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani lawmakers elected a textile businessman who briefly served as the governor of southern Sindh province as the country’s next president Tuesday, the election commission chief said, a result that was widely expected.

The election of Mamnoon Hussain, nominated by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N party, followed a late night attack by 150 Taliban militants on a prison, illustrating one of the major challenges facing the new president. The fighters freed more than 250 prisoners, including 38 suspected militants, and killed 14 people, including guards and Shiite Muslim prisoners, officials said.

Pakistan’s largely ceremonial president is not elected by popular vote, but by lawmakers in the Senate, National Assembly and the assemblies of the four provinces. Tuesday’s outcome was widely predicted because the PML-N won majorities in the National Assembly and the assembly of Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab, in June, all but assuring that Hussain would win.

Hussain received 432 votes from lawmakers on Tuesday, said the head of Pakistan’s election commission, Fakhruddin Ibrahim. The only other candidate, retired judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, received 77 votes. Ahmed was nominated by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a party led by former cricket star Imran Khan.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will remain the most powerful figure in the civilian government in Pakistan, a key ally for the United States in battling Islamic militants and negotiating an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

The vote was marred by controversy because of the Supreme Court’s decision to accept a request by the ruling party to move the election forward. It was originally scheduled for Aug. 6. The request came because some lawmakers wanted to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia toward the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ends around Aug. 8.

The country’s former ruling party, the Pakistan People’s Party, which has the second highest number of seats in the National Assembly, announced it would boycott the presidential election over the court’s ruling. The PPP complained that the judges ruled without hearing from the opposition, and the new election date didn’t give the party enough time to campaign.

The court’s decision sparked criticism outside the party from observers who have long warned about the Supreme Court’s tendency to overreach. They argued that the decision about the election date should have been left to the country’s election commission.

Hussain was born to an industrialist family in 1940 in the Indian city of Agra. His family settled in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, after Pakistan was carved out of British India in 1947, and set up a textile business there.

Hussain is a longtime member of the PML-N and served as governor of Sindh for about four months in 1999, but otherwise has not been a prominent figure in national politics.

Hussain will replace the current president, Asif Ali Zardari, whose five-year term ends on Sept. 8. Zardari rose to power after his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a gun and bomb attack in December 2007.

Zardari has been a contentious figure as president and has often battled with both the powerful army and the Supreme Court.

Blackouts lasting more than half a day in some areas have infuriated many Pakistanis in this nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people, prompting the new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to declare tackling the crisis one of his top priorities.

Khawaja Asif, minister for water and power, told Reuters his team would reduce Pakistan’s reliance on expensive oil imports, build new power plants and pay off a chain of debt choking one of the most inefficient energy sectors in the world.

As part of the new plan, Asif said Pakistan would announce significant cuts to subsidized tariffs for powerful industries in the next few days and boost investment to upgrade ageing transmission lines and power generation facilities.

“The whole thing is a nightmare,” said Asif, describing the current state of his sector.

“We are going for a surgery. There will be a lot of pain. A lot of discomfort. But once the patient is up and about, running, then he will say that the pain was worthwhile.”

Asif, seen as a pro-market technocrat, served as petroleum minister in 2008 and was chairman of the privatization commission in a previous Sharif cabinet in the 1990s.

His plan, due to be unveiled next week, is set to be Pakistan’s boldest attempt in over a decade to tackle persistent power cuts that have stunted economic growth in a country already plagued by sectarian violence, poverty and corruption.

But critics have questioned just how far Sharif will be prepared to go to overhaul an important sector criss-crossed by decades-long alliances, industry loyalties and lobby groups watching each other’s backs.

Asif said his first step was to plug a 500 billion rupee ($5 billion) financing hole, known as ‘circular debt’ – a vicious cycle of unpaid bills running through the entire power-generation chain – and to reduce the length of power cuts.

“The elimination of loadshedding (power cuts) completely will take place in three years, God willing,” he said.

PRIVATISATION

Pakistan’s state power companies are notoriously inefficient. Many influential families refuse to pay their bills while the poor often cannot afford to pay.

The government sells power below the cost of production but pays subsidies late or not at all. Plants cannot afford fuel.

As a result, Pakistan has lost an estimated 5 billion rupees in the last five years, a loss it can ill-afford as it struggles to revive its moribund economy and reduce its budget deficit.

The government had already paid $3 billion of the circular debt in its first 40 days in office and plans to pay off the rest by the first week of August, Asif said.

“At the moment we need to get rid of this debt situation,” he said. “If we don’t do that, it will start piling up again.”

In the longer term, he said Pakistan would move from relying on expensive imported oil to hydroelectric, coal and gas-based power to reduce the costs of generation.

“Our goal is to change the energy mix of our country,” Asif said. “New generation capacity should be based on cheaper fuel.”

For this, at least 10 hydroelectric power plants are in the pipeline, which Asif predicts will come online by 2016.

New projects also include a Chinese-financed wind power plant near the second city of Karachi, solar energy projects in Sharif’s home province of Punjab and plans to import liquefied natural gas via a new terminal from 2014.

“Generation can be taken over by the private sector and distribution should be also done by the private sector. The government should gradually get out of this business.”

“We will increase the tariff in the coming days,” Asif said. “Bigger consumers, they will have … no subsidy. But we will protect the domestic consumers,” he said, referring to individual households.

A Pakistani teenager nearly killed by Taliban gunmen for advocating that all girls should have the right to go to school gave her first formal public remarks Friday at the United Nations. It also happened to be Malala Yousafzai’s 16th birthday.

“Today, it is an honor for me to be speaking again after a long time,” she said. “Being here with such honorable people is a great moment in my life.”

She looked out at an audience of hundreds of children from around the world and U.N. members, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and told them that she was wearing a pink shawl that once belonged to Benazir Bhutto, the two-time prime minister of Pakistan who was killed in 2007 in a suicide attack at a political rally.

“I don’t know where to begin my speech,” she said. “I don’t know what people would be expecting me to say. But first of all, thank you to God for whom we all are equal and thank you to every person who has prayed for my fast recovery and a new life. I cannot believe how much love people have shown me.”

She went on to give a rousing speech, saying that she held no contempt in her heart for the masked gunmen who, on October 9, 2012, jumped on her school bus and shouted her name, scaring other girls into identifying her. The gunmen shot and injured two other girls as well as Yousafzai.

“They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed,” she said. “And then, out of that silence, came thousands of voices.”

Yousafzai said she doesn’t want revenge against the Taliban, who have threatened to hunt her down again and end her life.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan took a major step toward averting an economic crisis Thursday, reaching an initial deal with the International Monetary Fund on a bailout of at least $5.3 billion to help shore up the country’s rapidly diminishing foreign reserves.

The announcement should help calm fears of financial instability in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people that is also grappling with rampant violence by Islamic militants. But the deal mandates economic reforms that may be unpopular with Pakistanis.

Pakistan is a vital ally of the United States, the most powerful member of the IMF, which relies on Islamabad’s help to fight Taliban and al-Qaida militants and negotiate peace in neighboring Afghanistan. Analysts predicted U.S. pressure would be key to sealing a deal.

The agreement comes less than six years after Pakistan’s last IMF bailout, and the driving need for the money this time was to repay the institution nearly $5 billion that Islamabad still owes.

Pakistan’s previous government failed to implement many of the requirements of the last loan, including reducing the deficit and improving tax collection, and ended the program early. That left the new government, which took over at the beginning of June, with the difficult task of convincing the IMF that this time would be different.

The IMF mission director in Pakistan, Jeffrey Franks, acknowledged Islamabad’s checkered history, but said the institution would not punish the country for the failure of its predecessors.

“It is true that some previous programs have not been completely successful,” said Franks at a joint news conference with Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar in Islamabad. “But the IMF is in the job of helping countries when they have difficult situations and need help, and we’re not going to turn a country down because previous governments did not do what they had promised to do.”

The $5.3 billion loan will be disbursed over a three-year period and will have an interest rate of roughly three percent, said Franks. It will be repaid over 10 years after an initial grace period of four years, he said.

The deal has been approved by the Pakistani government and IMF staffers in the country, but it still needs to be approved by IMF officials in Washington and the institution’s executive board. Pakistan would like the loan to be increased to $7.3 billion, but that is still under discussion, as is the precise timing of the disbursements.

The deal will be put before the IMF board in early September, assuming Pakistan first commits to key reforms designed to increase growth and improve financial stability, said Franks. Those include reforms needed to bring down the deficit, reduce pervasive electricity shortages and increase the country’s woeful tax collection.

This process differs from the last bailout, when the money was disbursed with the promise of reform that never ended up happening. Since 1988, Pakistan has signed onto eight IMF programs that demanded structural changes in the economy. But it has never managed to resolve its chronic problems.

“There will be some difficult decisions which the government is taking to get to that point of higher economic growth, reduced poverty and a better life for all Pakistanis,” said Franks.

Growth has only averaged three percent over the past few years, less than half the rate needed to supply jobs to Pakistan’s growing population.

Pakistan has already committed to some of the reforms this time around in the federal budget that passed last month, said Franks.

The deficit, which was roughly 9 percent of gross domestic product last year, will be brought down to around 6 percent this year and reduced to 3.5 to 4 percent by the end of the three-year program, said Franks. This will partly be done by restructuring and privatizing loss-making state-owned enterprises.

The government has committed to undertake steps to reverse Pakistan’s electricity shortages, which cause rolling blackouts of up to 20 hours a day in some parts of the country. The government will phase out costly subsidies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, who use far more energy than the poor, said Dar, the finance minister.

It will also seek to lower the cost of producing electricity by converting fuel-powered plants to run on coal. The government spends about $1 billion in foreign currency each month to run its power plants, which has rapidly reduced the country’s foreign reserves.

Pakistan’s foreign reserves stood at just $6.3 billion as of June 21, down from more than $14 billion two years ago. That is only enough to cover about 1.5 months’ worth of imports, while the IMF considers adequate foreign reserves for any country enough to cover three months of imports.

The government also promised to reduce tax exemptions and improve collection to bring in more revenue, said Dar. Taxes currently bring in only about 10 percent of gross domestic product, one of the lowest effective tax rates in the world.

The finance minister said the reforms mandated by the program were ones that the government intended to implement anyway, an apparent attempt to deflect criticism in a country where IMF bailouts are unpopular because the institution is perceived to demand actions that hurt common citizens.

Dar said the government was entering into the new program for the good of the country and would take steps to make sure that the poorest Pakistanis weren’t hurt. He also blamed the previous government for putting Pakistan in its current economic position.

“A better tomorrow dawns only when requisite pains are borne today,” said Dar. “These pains are the result of fiscal and financial indiscipline that was practiced in the past few years in Pakistan.”

The dead included six policemen and a paramilitary Ranger, said Sharjeel Memon, the information minister for southern Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital. The explosion also wounded 15 people, including policemen and Rangers as well as the judge, he said.

The Sindh High Court judge who was targeted, Maqbool Baqir, was being treated at a private hospital, and his condition was stable, said Memon.

“We had provided maximum security to Maqbool Baqir, and he was wounded in today’s bomb attack at his convoy,” said Memon.

Baqir was on his way to court when the bomb exploded, said senior police official Ameer Sheik. The bomb, which was attached to a motorcycle, was so powerful that it damaged some nearby shops.

Local TV footage showed authorities transporting victims of the attack to the hospital.

Ahsanullah Ahsan, the spokesman for Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility, saying they detonated the bomb by remote control.

“We attacked the judge in Karachi as he was taking decisions against Shariah and he was harmful for mujahideen,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone call from an unknown place.

Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city with 18 million people and has a long history of violence, both by gangs connected to political parties and increasingly by Taliban militants who have relocated there from sanctuaries in the northwest along the Afghan border.

Earlier this week, on the other side of Pakistan, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for a militant attack on a climbing camp at the foot of the country’s second-highest mountain in which 10 foreign tourists and a Pakistani guide were killed.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s premier said Monday that the military ruler who ousted him in a coup over a decade ago should be tried for treason, but the government stopped short of pressing official charges.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif spoke in parliament as the Supreme Court held a hearing on a possible treason case against Pervez Musharraf. The former military ruler can only be tried for treason if the federal government presses charges against him.
Sharif said the government agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision that Musharraf committed treason under Article 6 of the constitution when he declared a state of emergency in 2007 and suspended the constitution. Trying Musharraf for treason could set up a clash with the country’s powerful army.
“The prime minister is under oath to protect, preserve and defend the constitution and it is implicit in his oath that his government ensures that persons guilty of acts under Article 6 are brought to justice,” Sharif said in parliament.
The premier was reading from a statement that was submitted to the Supreme Court by Attorney General Munir Malik on Monday. The statement did not mention Musharraf’s ouster of Sharif in a coup in 1999 when he was serving as army chief, perhaps because the move was retroactively approved by the Supreme Court and parliament at the time.
“Musharraf has to answer for all his deeds in court,” Sharif said in a separate part of the speech.
But the government stopped short of actually pressing charges against Musharraf and said it will consult with other political parties on the matter, leaving open the possibility that it could still choose to abandon the case at some point in the future. Musharraf would be the first military ruler tried for treason in a country that has experienced three military coups in its nearly 66-year history.
“The federal government will proceed in accordance with the law and also take political forces into confidence through a consultative process so that the collective will and wisdom of the people of Pakistan is duly reflected in further process in this behalf.”
Musharraf, who is currently under house arrest in connection with a separate case, could face the death penalty or life in prison if he is convicted of treason. But some analysts doubt the army, which is considered the country’s most powerful institution, would allow that to happen and could intervene to prevent it. Musharraf has maintained his innocence.
Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March after years in self-imposed exile, with the hope of running in the national election that was held in May. But he was disqualified from participating in the vote because of his actions while in power and has spent most of his time battling legal cases. The government has barred him from leaving the country while the cases are in progress.
The caretaker government that ruled the country in the run-up to the election declined to press treason charges against Musharraf, telling the Supreme Court that the issue was outside its mandate.
Supreme Court judges quizzed the attorney general on Monday about the government’s specific plans to bring charges against Musharraf. Malik requested 30 days to prepare a plan. The judges ordered him to appear before the court again on Thursday to provide an update.
Also Monday, gunmen on motorcycles killed a mid-ranking police officer and his driver in the northwest city of Peshawar, said police official Mohammed Ibrahim Khan. Amanullah Khan, a deputy superintendent, was in charge of the traffic police in Peshawar.
No one has claimed responsibility, but suspicion will likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban.
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Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to this report from Peshawar.
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