Travel ban hearing for Pakistan's Musharraf postponed

A Pakistani court on Monday adjourned a hearing into a travel ban against former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, his lawyer said, a day after the government announced it would try him for treason. The former general applied last week to be removed from the government's "exit control list" that stops him leaving Pakistan, to go to visit his sick mother in Dubai. Musharraf is facing a host of criminal cases dating back to his 1999-2008 rule, including for the murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. The Sindh High Court in Karachi put off considering Musharraf's exit control list application until November 22, after the government's attorney-general failed to attend court, lawyer A.Q. Hallipota said. The decision to try Musharraf for treason, announced live on TV by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, puts the country's civilian leaders on an unprecedented collision course with the all-powerful military. It comes after Musharraf was granted bail in other cases against him, stoking rumours a deal for his departure could be imminent. The treason accusation relates to Musharraf's decision in 2007 to impose emergency rule shortly before the Supreme Court was due to decide on the legality of his re-election as president a month earlier while he was still army chief. Critics said the announcement smacked of political opportunism and appeared to be aimed at deflecting public attention from sectarian violence on Friday. At least nine people were killed in Rawalpindi, which neighbours Islamabad, during clashes on the most important day of the mourning month of Moharram, traditionally a flashpoint for sectarian violence. An editorial in Dawn, Pakistan's oldest English-language newspaper, said that faced with mounting crises, the government had decided to "change the subject". Analyst and retired general Talat Masood said the timing of the announcement, just 10 days before army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is to step down, was "inappropriate". "This is a case which involves civil military relations and is very sensitive and would not just confine to Musharraf," Masood told AFP. "The matter could have been dealt with at a later stage -- they are definitely trying to deflect from their failures to provide security during Moharram." Afshan Adil, a member of Musharraf's legal team and representative of his All Pakistan Muslim League, denounced the treason decision but said her leader was not afraid. Aides to the 70-year-old former commando have said he wants to stay and clear his name of all the charges against him. So far the cases have proceeded with glacial slowness, edging from adjournment to adjournment with almost no perceptible progress made since April, beyond the granting of bail. Masood the analyst warned the government had opened the way to yet another "judicial quagmire" with its decision to press treason charges. Musharraf overthrew the government of Nawaz Sharif -- elected to power again in May this year -- in a bloodless military coup in October 1999, but a year later the Supreme Court validated the take over. During the 2007 emergency rule he suspended the constitution and parliament, and sacked top judges who declared his actions unconstitutional and illegal. Musharraf technically became a free man this month when an Islamabad district court granted him bail over a deadly raid on a radical mosque in the capital in 2007. But faced with Taliban threats to his life, he has remained under heavy guard at his villa on the edge of Islamabad