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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan When Inam Ur Raheem, a retired military lawyer, started a legal challenge this week seeking to end the tenure of Pakistans supreme military commander, he was preparing the latest shot in a barrage of legal challenges to the countrys powerful military establishment in recent months.
But just one day after his filing in the Islamabad High Court, the battle came directly to him.
On Wednesday night, as he returned from a family funeral to his home in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, three vehicles surrounded the taxi in which he was traveling and pushed it off the road, he said.
Six unidentified men leapt out and attacked Mr. Raheem, raining blows on his head and upper torso. I resisted, so they attacked me with punches and sticks, he said during an interview at a nearby hospital, where he was treated for cuts to the nose and head. They said they were teaching me a lesson for what I was doing.
What Mr. Raheem, a 57-year-old retired colonel, had been doing was challenging the validity of a three-year extension of service for Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in 2010. General Kayani, the army chief, turned 60 this year, which Mr. Raheem argues is the age limit for his post, thus rendering the remainder of his term extension invalid.
Mr. Raheem believes the beating, which occurred just 200 yards from the militarys general headquarters, was a clear attempt to force him to back off. No one except the army chief and his military intelligence chief can be behind this attack, he said.
The army spokesman was not available for comment, but another military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive issue, described Mr. Raheems account as baseless. No security official was involved in beating up of Inam ur Raheem, he said.
The investigation into the assault is now in police hands. But theres little doubt that Mr. Raheem had entered perilous waters particularly at a time when the military leadership faces an array of legal actions that challenge several pillars of the armys longstanding grip on power in Pakistan.
Nine serving or retired generals are currently in the dock in either military or civilian courts, or under investigation by the governments anti-corruption body, the National Accountability Bureau. Last month, at the conclusion of an investigation into election rigging dating to 1990, the Supreme Court ordered the government to start criminal proceedings against Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, a former army chief, and Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani, a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
Another former ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi, who served as the railways minister under the military ruler Pervez Musharraf, faces investigation for his part in a contentious deal in which land ceded to the railways was converted into a high-class country club in the eastern city of Lahore.
Meanwhile, the supreme court has applied stringent pressure on the ISI and its sister agency, Military Intelligence, to answer for their activities in the western province of Baluchistan. Human rights groups say that nationalist rebels there are regularly detained by intelligence operatives, tortured and sometimes summarily executed.
The Pakistani news media, which have long handled the military with kid gloves, have seized on the recent cases with a newfound aggressiveness, adding to the public perception that the military has been put on the defensive like never before. Yet for all the public humiliations, few believe the militarys actual grip on power, or the influence it can wield against President Asif Ali Zardaris civilian government, has waned much. And the generals, while accepting some of the criticism, have also shot back, appearing to signal that enough is enough.
In the most notable case, General Kayani issued a rare public statement this month in which he made a veiled but hard-hitting criticism of the judiciary and the media. The statement has been the subject of frenzied speculation in newspaper editorial pages ever since.
Senior generals insist that, in a country besieged by fractious politics and myriad violent conflicts, the unified and disciplined army is the glue that holds it all together. They are angered that their blood sacrifice against the Taliban in the northwest, and against nationalists in Baluchistan a conflict they insist is being primed by Pakistans archenemy, India has been overshadowed by human rights concerns.
read more here
A Pakistani Lawyer Takes on the Army and Pays in Bruises - NYTimes.com
anything that can possibly challenge Pakistan's most powerful man's unholy and unconstitutional powers in Pakistan affairs, faces the wrath..... !!
SHAME !!
But just one day after his filing in the Islamabad High Court, the battle came directly to him.
On Wednesday night, as he returned from a family funeral to his home in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, three vehicles surrounded the taxi in which he was traveling and pushed it off the road, he said.
Six unidentified men leapt out and attacked Mr. Raheem, raining blows on his head and upper torso. I resisted, so they attacked me with punches and sticks, he said during an interview at a nearby hospital, where he was treated for cuts to the nose and head. They said they were teaching me a lesson for what I was doing.
What Mr. Raheem, a 57-year-old retired colonel, had been doing was challenging the validity of a three-year extension of service for Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in 2010. General Kayani, the army chief, turned 60 this year, which Mr. Raheem argues is the age limit for his post, thus rendering the remainder of his term extension invalid.
Mr. Raheem believes the beating, which occurred just 200 yards from the militarys general headquarters, was a clear attempt to force him to back off. No one except the army chief and his military intelligence chief can be behind this attack, he said.
The army spokesman was not available for comment, but another military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive issue, described Mr. Raheems account as baseless. No security official was involved in beating up of Inam ur Raheem, he said.
The investigation into the assault is now in police hands. But theres little doubt that Mr. Raheem had entered perilous waters particularly at a time when the military leadership faces an array of legal actions that challenge several pillars of the armys longstanding grip on power in Pakistan.
Nine serving or retired generals are currently in the dock in either military or civilian courts, or under investigation by the governments anti-corruption body, the National Accountability Bureau. Last month, at the conclusion of an investigation into election rigging dating to 1990, the Supreme Court ordered the government to start criminal proceedings against Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, a former army chief, and Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani, a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
Another former ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi, who served as the railways minister under the military ruler Pervez Musharraf, faces investigation for his part in a contentious deal in which land ceded to the railways was converted into a high-class country club in the eastern city of Lahore.
Meanwhile, the supreme court has applied stringent pressure on the ISI and its sister agency, Military Intelligence, to answer for their activities in the western province of Baluchistan. Human rights groups say that nationalist rebels there are regularly detained by intelligence operatives, tortured and sometimes summarily executed.
The Pakistani news media, which have long handled the military with kid gloves, have seized on the recent cases with a newfound aggressiveness, adding to the public perception that the military has been put on the defensive like never before. Yet for all the public humiliations, few believe the militarys actual grip on power, or the influence it can wield against President Asif Ali Zardaris civilian government, has waned much. And the generals, while accepting some of the criticism, have also shot back, appearing to signal that enough is enough.
In the most notable case, General Kayani issued a rare public statement this month in which he made a veiled but hard-hitting criticism of the judiciary and the media. The statement has been the subject of frenzied speculation in newspaper editorial pages ever since.
Senior generals insist that, in a country besieged by fractious politics and myriad violent conflicts, the unified and disciplined army is the glue that holds it all together. They are angered that their blood sacrifice against the Taliban in the northwest, and against nationalists in Baluchistan a conflict they insist is being primed by Pakistans archenemy, India has been overshadowed by human rights concerns.
read more here
A Pakistani Lawyer Takes on the Army and Pays in Bruises - NYTimes.com
anything that can possibly challenge Pakistan's most powerful man's unholy and unconstitutional powers in Pakistan affairs, faces the wrath..... !!
SHAME !!
