KARACHI, May 9: Balochistan National Party-M chief Sardar Akhtar Mengal was released on Friday on a court order.

A large number of party leaders and workers gathered at a hospital where Sardar Akhtar was under treatment and took him to his home in a motorcade. Sindh Interior Minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza was also present.

The BNP-M leader will visit Balochistan in a few weeks to meet party leaders and workers.

Sardar Akhtar, a former chief minister of Balochistan, was arrested in September 2006 on terrorism charges. He was reportedly presented in a court in an ‘iron cage’ in Karachi Central Jail, where he had been sent on Dec 24, 2006.

His father, Baloch nationalist leader Sardar Ataullah Mengal, had expressed fear at that time that the former government and agencies might kill his son.

BNP-M leaders termed the release a defeat of dictatorship and victory of democracy, saying that he had been freed without any deal. “There is no word for deal in the Baloch dictionary,” they said.

Earlier, an anti-terrorism court discharged the former chief minister from a case pertaining to kidnapping of two army personnel and holding them hostage. The special public prosecutor informed the court that the Sindh government had withdrawn the case.

The prosecution had accused Sardar Akhtar of kidnapping two personnel of Military Intelligence with the help of his security guards on April 5, 2006, and holding them hostage with the intention of killing them. The men were released after a siege of Mr Mengal’s home in Defence Housing Authority by law enforcement agencies, it claimed.

SPP Mazhar Qayyum told the court that the state was not willing to proceed with the case as it had been withdrawn by the provincial government under Section 494 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Judge Ahmed Nawaz Shaikh of the ATC-III, who was conducting the trial in the Central Prison, while allowing the application directed the jail superintendent to release the BNP-M leader if he was not wanted in any other case.

The indictment of the former chief minister had been deferred repeatedly since June last year because of his deteriorating health.

According to his lawyer Wazir Khoso, he was admitted in Liquat National Hospital when the court ordered his release.

An anti-terrorism court had sentenced the co-accused in the case — Ghulam Hyder Langah, Nasarullah Mengal, Mehboob Ali Satti and Ghulam Qadir — on Dec 9, 2006.

AFP adds: “Our struggle will continue till the military operation in Balochistan is stopped and our demands for autonomy are met,” Sardar Akhtar said after his release.

He welcomed the court order but said he was more concerned about the “thousands of missing” Baloch political workers. “I am more concerned about thousands of innocent people who have disappeared,” he told AFP.

He said the new coalition government had released him.

“We did not bow before Musharraf. In fact he has bowed before us,” he said.