ISLAMABAD: Retired General Pervez Musharraf approached the Supreme Court on Saturday seeking stay of his trial in a special court on treason charges. The special court has summoned him for a fifth time on Jan 16.

“We submitted an application before the Supreme Court today with a request to fix Gen Musharraf’s review petition for Jan 16 and stay the trial before the special court,” Mohammad Ibrahim Satti, his lawyer, told Dawn on Saturday

“Musharraf’s legal team is banking on the Supreme Court and hoping that it will intervene in a bid to prevent his appearance before the special court. Otherwise an adverse order like [issuance of] non-bailable warrants could be passed,” commented a senior lawyer.

On Dec 23, Mr Musharraf filed a petition after a delay of over four years seeking a review of the landmark July 31, 2009, verdict which denounced successive military takeovers and their endorsement by the superior judiciary and declared proclamation of emergency and cancellation of appointments of over 100 superior court judges on Nov 3, 2007, by the military ruler a second coup.

The review petition was returned by the court office with eight objections against which an appeal was preferred.

On Jan 8, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali ordered the court office to place the appeal, along with the review petition, before a Supreme Court bench to decide about the objections as well as the request for revisiting the 2009 judgment.

On Saturday, Gen Musharraf filed two applications — one asking for a hearing of the review petition on Jan 16 and staying the proceedings before the trial court and the other for removing the minor objections raised by the court office for which Justice Jamali had granted a few days.

The former president has requested the court to allow his team of lawyers, comprising Sharifuddin Pirzada, Dr Khalid Ranjha and others, to argue the review petition.