ISLAMABAD, May 15: A special prosecutor of the Islamabad police has excused himself from appearing in the judges’ detention case in which former military ruler General (retired) Pervez Musharraf is an accused.

Advocate Syed Mohammad Tayyab, special prosecutor of the Islamabad police, is the third lawyer in less than a month to have disassociated himself in the judges’ detention case.

Earlier, Qamar Afzal advocate and Raja Rizwan Abbasi, counsels of Gen Musharraf had cited different reasons and refused to defend the former president in the said case.

Talking to Dawn advocate Tayyab said that because of his mother’s sickness he was unable to engage in the case.

“It is time consuming and I cannot afford to spare my time in such a complicated case when my mother is in the hospital in a critical condition” he said.

He said he had already informed the chief commissioner Islamabad regarding his unavailability, and another lawyer was being arranged to argue the case.

Because of absence of police prosecutor Syed Kausar Abbas Zaidi, the special judge of Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) Islamabad adjourned the hearing of the bail application of Gen Musharraf till May 18.

After the death of Chaudhry Zulfiqar, the special prosecutor of the FIA in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, on May 3, the lawyers associated with the cases related to the former president Musharraf have been receiving threats from unknown persons.

Earlier, FIA special prosecutor Mohammad Azhar Chaudhry had also refused to appear in the ATC Rawalpindi without ‘box security’. On Tuesday, he arrived in the court after the interior ministry deployed 25 Rangers officials for his security during the hearing of the case.

Since the last couple of weeks, at least three anti-Musharraf lawyers– Mujeebur Rehman Kiyani, Basharatullah Khan and Sardar Manzar Bashir- were briefly abducted and tortured by unknown men in different parts of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

On Tuesday, unknown men also chased a Rawalpindi lawyer Faisal Butt who had played an active role in the restoration of the judges’ movement, but Mr Butt managed to dodge them and reach the district courts.