ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court threw out on Thursday a petition of former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf seeking review of its July 31, 2009, judgement on the grounds that it contained irrelevant precedence and was also time-barred.

“For reasons to be recorded later, we have found the review petition filed by former president Pervez Musharraf debarred by time, that the precedence cited in the case are distinguishable and the questions raised in the petition neither fall under the jurisdiction of review nor are tenable on merit warranting interference of this court,” announced Chief Justice Tasadduq Hussain Jillani while heading a 14-judge bench which had taken up Gen Musharraf’s petition filed after four years and five months.

It sought review of the apex court’s July 31, 2009, verdict which had denounced successive military takeovers and their endorsement by the superior judiciary after declaring Gen Musharraf’s Nov 3, 2007, and most of the actions under taken it, including the appointment of over 100 superior court judges, as illegal and unconstitutional.

“Finality attained,” said advocate Shaharyar Riaz, who attended all three days of proceedings in the courtroom-1.

Even the lawyers representing Gen Musharraf could not grasp the opportunity provided by the court at least on two occasions when it sought their opinion about the issuance of a directive to the special court seized with the former president’s treason trial to proceed with the case, independent of the observations made in the July 31 judgement against him.

Perhaps this was the reason one of his lawyers, Muhammad Ibrahim Satti, realised the mistake at the end of Thursday’s proceeding. Sensing the mood, he requested the court to accept the review petition and “do make some observations in favour of Gen Musharraf who is in a cage”.

“I thought he is in a hospital,” retorted Justice Nasirul Mulk, a member of the bench. “Reviews are either accepted or rejected; there is no third way,” Justice Saqib Nisar said.

Advocate Satti said that both Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Gen Musharraf were at daggers drawn, but this was an irony that one had become the chief justice and the other the accused.

Eminent lawyer Sharifuddin Pirzada, representing Gen Musharraf, declined to comment on the short order.

Advocate Athar Minallah, who was spokesperson for former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry during the lawyers’ movement, said the biggest and positive aspect which emerged during the entire hearing was that Mr Pirzada had faced an independent court and judges for the first time in 65 years.

Former attorney general Irfan Qadir was of the opinion that the rejection of Gen Musharraf’s review petition was a departure from previous verdicts in several cases and thus violation of the apex court’s own orders.

Chaudhry Faisal Hussain, who assisted Sharifuddin Pirzada, said the court had preferred to stick to the old maxim that delay defeats justice.

Advocate Rasheed A. Razvi, the former president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, on whose petition the Supreme Court had issued the July 31, 2009, judgement, said the order was well reasoned and by dismissing the petition the court had once again endorsed the view taken in the 1972 Asma Jillani case in which it had held former military dictator Gen Yahya Khan as usurper and said Pakistan was not an occupied territory.

He said the verdict had also proved that the march towards independence of judiciary continued and those saying that the change of guards in the apex court would reverse the gear of independent judiciary were wrong.

Sheikh Ehsanuddin, a former president of the Rawalpindi Bar Association, said the Supreme Court had forever shut the doors for any adventurism, adding that Gen Musharraf’s lawyers had utterly failed to prove any error floating on the face of the July 31 judgement.

Earlier, Mr Pirzada had argued in the court that constitutional deviation had also taken place in the past like in the cases of Nusrat Bhutto and Zafar Ali Shah and, therefore, the Nov 3, 2007, deviation was liable to be condoned.

He also cited the examples of India, where former prime minister Indira Gandhi had proclaimed emergency in 1975 for two years, and Canada where parliament was suspended.