September 11, 2007	Tuesday	Sha'aban 28, 1428

LAHORE, Sept 10: The National Workers Party and the Labour Party Pakistan have supported the APDM call for a strike against the detention of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on arrival at Islamabad airport and his subsequent deportation to Saudi Arabia.At a joint press conference here on Monday, NWP President Abid Hassan Minto and LPP Secretary General Farooq Tariq said the treatment meted out to the former prime minister and his party workers was the worst form of state oppression.

They said the workers reaching the Islamabad Airport to welcome their leader were baton-charged and tear-gassed.

They said Nawaz Sharif had the right to return to Pakistan under Article 15 of the Constitution, but he was detained at the airport on his arrival from UK in violation of the Supreme Court orders and then deported to Saudi Arabia.

Mr Minto said no law of the land allowed deportation of any citizen, adding the action against Mian Nawaz Sharif was extra-constitutional and the Saudi government’s interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan was unjustified.

He called upon PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto to learn a lesson from the treatment meted out to Mian Nawaz Sharif and stop expecting transparent general elections under Gen Musharraf.

The PPP chairperson, he said, should know that dictators did not believe in peaceful transfer of power.

Mr Minto said the government did `multiple illegal acts’ during the episode; first it unlawfully detained the former prime minister and then `kidnapped’ and smuggled him out of the country in a foreign country plane.

The lawyer also accused the government of harassing the PML-N leader and his supporters, and arresting many of them without any lawful reason. He said the step would affect the forthcoming elections as well as future politics in the country.

He appealed to all democratic individuals, institutions and elements to take to street in an organised way to secure their rights by ousting the army ruler. —Reporter