December 06, 2007	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 25, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: Police launched a crackdown on lawyers late on Wednesday night and rounded up a few of them in a bid to pre-empt a march towards the barricaded residence of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Thursday, officials said.

“The capital administration has issued the detention orders of more than two dozen lawyers,” the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Dawn.

Shortly after receiving the directives, police parties raided the houses of the legal practitioners to detain them but met little success as most of them went underground to evade capture.

However, a senior official in the Islamabad administration rebutted the talk of issuance of any such orders.

“Probably the lawyers are being taken into custody to avoid a situation similar to that witnessed on Tuesday and Wednesday in which law and order situation was created by the demonstrators,” he said, adding that: “The arrests were being made because of violation of Section 144.”

A senior police official told this reporter that as protests and public gatherings were already banned in Islamabad, the lawyers were being picked up under the 3 MPO.

“We are not targeting any specific lawyer as our main objective is to foil the Thursday march,” he said, and added that: “Participation of people in such protests is increasing, which is a threat to peace.”

The crackdown has apparently been initiated amid fears of a large-scale demonstrations by the lawyers’ community and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leadership and activists, who have planned to visit the residence of the deposed chief justice around midday.

The Islamabad Bar Association has earlier announced that its members would march to Iftikhar Chaudhry’s residence at 11am, but the plan was changed after the PML-N said its chief Nawaz Sharif would also visit the ousted chief justice at 1pm.

Islamabad bar’s president Haroonur Rasheed told Dawn that the bar association will reveal its new plan on Thursday’s morning, however, the lawyers’ will march to the Judicial Colony sometime in the afternoon, Mr Rasheed said.

A reporter from Rawalpindi adds: Lawyers here on Wednesday termed the removal of 24 judges of three high courts another extra- constitutional step taken by the government after the promulgation of a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO).

Addressing the general body meeting of the District Bar Association (DBA), former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) vice-president Mohammad Ikram Chaudhry said the notification about the termination of services of the high court judges had no legality as it was issued under the PCO.

He also condemned the decision, saying “it was another blow to the independence of superior judiciary.”