February 26, 2006	Sunday	Muharram 27, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 25: The lawyer of Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari has urged Chief Justice of Pakistan to take a suo motu action against the Rawalpindi accountability court that ordered confiscation of his client’s property in the BMW reference.

“The order was written outside the court and was disseminated in the media on Friday despite the fact that the court was not hearing the case on Friday,” Advocate Babar Awan alleged at a press conference.

He said it was for the first time in the history of the country that a court had ordered confiscation of someone’s property without issuing notices to the person concerned.

He said there were instances in which the British government confiscated the property of those who owed money to the East India Company but not in the history of Pakistan.

Mr Awan said the court had not notified to Mr Zardari about its move and that his client was not an absconder but had left the country after taking permission from the court.

According to the law, a lawyer could represent his client and that was why no one from the opposite party in the ARY case had so far appeared in the court except their lawyers, he said.

He alleged that NAB’s decision was part of the government’s ongoing media trial against the PPP to stop the party chairperson Benazir Bhutto from returning to the country to take part in the forthcoming general elections.

“Expanding over a period of more than 10 years, Mr Zardari’s trial was the longest in the history of the world,” he claimed. He said the government was unable to prove the cases in the court owing to which the Supreme Court had recently cleared Mr Zardari of the Steel Mills reference and three other criminal cases.

He alleged that the government was also putting pressures on some judges who acted against its wishes.

He said on the one hand the government had issued red notices to Mr Zardari and Benazir Bhutto and on the other it was not willing to do the same against those involved in the construction of Margalla Towers which partially collapsed in the October 8 earthquake killing dozens of people.