Court issues notice to Musharraf

A Pakistani court Monday issued notice to former president Pervez Musharraf and nine others after they failed to appear for a hearing in a case relating to the Dec 27, 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Judge Ejaz Ahmad Chaudhry of the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High court issued the notice on a petition filed by Chaudhry Aslam, Bhutto's former protocol officer, seeking the registration of a first information report (FIR) on her killing.
Judge Chaudhry had Sep 1 summoned, among others, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan and then Punjab chief minister Pervez Elahi, to appear Sep 28.
Aslam's petition contends that these individuals were involved in the gun and bomb attack that killed Benazir Bhutto as she left a political rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi adjacent to Pakistani capital Islamabad and that a first information report should be registered against them.
Judge Asif Saeed Khosa had earlier refused to hear the petition when it was presented before him.
Musharraf, who is currently in Britain on a lecture tour, was not expected to respond to the summons. In July, he did not respond to a Supreme Court summons while it was hearing a petition on legality of the emergency Musharraf had imposed Nov 3, 2007. The court later ruled that his action was unconstitutional.
Pakistan's investigations into Benazir Bhutto's killing, as also one by Scotland Yard, failed to make headway largely because the spot where Bhutto was attacked was hosed down soon after the incident, destroying whatever evidence might have existed.