PPP fears Zardari will be taken by force to Switzerland
By Amir Wasim
ISLAMABAD, April 21: The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has expressed the fear that the government is preparing a plan to take Asif Ali Zardari forcibly to Switzerland.
The party's spokesman, Senator Farhatullah Khan Babar, said the apprehension was based on information that the additional health secretary of the government of Sindh, Mr Halipota, was summoned on Wednesday by the higher authorities and made to sign a certificate stating that Mr Zardari was fit to travel.
Mr Babar denied a claim of the government that Mr Zardari had submitted a medical certificate to the Swiss magistrate on March 29. He said Mr Zardari's counsel Farooq Naek had submitted the certificate on Monday last and no certificate had been submitted to the magistrate before that.
The PPP senator said an official medical board, constituted by the government last month under court orders, had unanimously given an opinion that Mr Zardari was medically unfit to travel for at least eight weeks. That medical opinion, he claimed, was still valid.
Mr Babar said the medical board was supposed to reconvene on May 28 to re-examine Mr Zardari and give an opinion if he was fit to travel. Mr Zardari, he said, was still in Islamabad and had not been taken to Karachi till late Wednesday night.
"It is strange that an official of the provincial health department in Karachi has issued a certificate of fitness to Mr Zardari bypassing the medical board and without even examining the PPP leader," Mr Babar said.
Furthermore, he said, the Swiss investigation magistrate's letter to the government of Pakistan about the start of investigations also stated that the physical presence of Mr Zardari before the magistrate was not necessary.
Why this haste to dispatch Mr Zardari out of the country? He said there was no question that Mr Zardari was aware of the notice before April 19. "What we say is that the government had received this notice on March 23 and served it on Mr Zardari on April 19," he added.
"Obviously, the government is fabricating a reason for kidnapping Mr Zardari to smuggle him out of the country," Mr Babar alleged. He said the government on the one hand was finding it difficult to justify the continued "incarceration" of Mr Zardari, and on the other it wanted to torture him by subjecting him to rigours of foreign travel despite his illness.
