ISLAMABAD: The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on Thursday briefed the Special Court seized with the high treason trial of former president retired General Pervez Musharraf on possible threats to his life.

On Wednesday, the three-judge court, headed by Justice Faisal Arab of the Sindh High Court, sought a briefing from the intelligence agency on a threat alert it had issued on March 10, a day before the former military ruler was to be indicted for imposing emergency on Nov 3, 2007.

The court had to defer the indictment for Friday because of the security alert.

According to sources privy to the development, a lieutenant colonel of the ISI informed the court in the in-camera briefing that since his return to the country in March last year, Gen Musharraf had been facing serious threats from over a dozen terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. The officer recalled two botched attacks on the former president in 2003 between the Headquarter 10 Corps and the Army House.

A military court had convicted about a dozen military personnel of involvement in the two attacks.

According to the sources, the court was interested in knowing the origin of the threat, its imminence and the way it was acquired and disseminated at this particular juncture. It also wanted to know whether the information came from some under-custody miscreants, a planted source or through routine interception of communications.

According to the sources, the ISI officer said the information had been acquired through interception of communications of some suspects and passed on to the interior ministry in accordance with the internal security manual prescribed in the ‘blue book’.

Under the procedure, the alert has to be routed with the consent of the ISI director general internal security.

In its threat alert forwarded to the interior ministry, the ISI warned that Gen Musharraf might be attacked by Al Qaeda and Taliban militants and even by his own security guards. “According to available information, the reconnaissance of all possible routes from the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (where Gen Musharraf is undergoing cardiac treatment) to the Special Court at National Library, Islamabad, has already been completed by miscreants and hardcore fighters have been placed on the routes likely to be followed by Gen Musharraf’s escort team,” the ISI said.

It also claimed that terrorists had penetrated the security/cavalcade of Gen Musharraf and might assassinate him en route to or inside/outside the court, recalling the murder of Salman Taseer.

The former Punjab governor was shot dead by his own gunman in Islamabad’s Kohsar market in January 2011.

On Tuesday, Mohammad Akram Sheikh, head of the prosecution team, claimed that the threat alert had been issued by the National Crisis Management Cell without the consent of the interior secretary.

The court will read out charges against Gen Musharraf on Friday, for which it had already issued summons to him.