Former President Pervez Musharraf

PAKISTAN: EX PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF SENTENCED TO DEATH BY SPECIAL COURT FOR HIGH TREASON

December 18, 2019:

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was on 17 December 2019 sentenced to death for high treason by a special court. He is the first former military ruler to have been tried and convicted for treason.
The case, along with a bunch of others, was filed against him in 2013 after his return to Pakistan from four years of self-imposed exile to run for parliament to “save” the troubled nuclear-armed state. In this, he faced charges for suspending, subverting and abrogating the Constitution, imposing an emergency in the country in November 2007 and detaining judges of Pakistan’s superior courts.
Musharraf, who had left Pakistan soon after he stepped down as President in 2008, exited the country a second time in March 2016 for “medical treatment”. He was declared an absconder in this case.
Musharraf was indicted on 31 March 2014, and the prosecution had tabled the entire evidence before the special court in September the same year. But the trial lingered on.
The special court, headed by Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth, had announced that it would deliver its verdict in the case on 17 December.