ISLAMABAD: The special court on Friday reserved its judgment on the application seeking joint trial of the ‘abettors’ along with former military ruler retired General Pervez Musharraf.

The three-judge special court, headed by Justice Faisal Arab of Sindh High Court (SHC), fixed November 21 for the announcement of the order.

“The arguments from both sides went to such a level that it requires time to pass an order,” Justice Arab observed. He said before passing an order, the court would also consider the progress reports the prosecution had submitted during the course of arguments.

Concluding his arguments, Musharraf’s counsel Barrister Farogh Nasim told the court that though the proclamation of November 3, 2007, was signed by his client as chief of the army staff (COAS), on December 15, 2007, he (Musharraf) revoked the emergency in his capacity as the president.

The counsel claimed that Gen Musharraf had imposed the emergency in his capacity as the president of Pakistan, adding if the emergency was imposed by the COAS, it was the responsibility of retired General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to revoke it after assuming the charge of COAS.

He alleged that Gen Kayani had played a double role in the imposition of the November 3 emergency as he not only consulted it with Gen Musharraf but also sustained it after becoming the army chief. He said Gen Kayani never denied his involvement in the imposition of the emergency or rebutted any story published in the press or aired in the television channels in this regard.

He pointed out that former prime minister Shaukat Aziz soon after the proclamation of the emergency had endorsed it by conducting a press conference. Likewise, several parliamentarians also supported the emergency. The bureaucrats concerned executed the proclamation of the emergency and the subsequent orders and hence abetted in the crime.

On Thursday, advocate Akram Sheikh, the lead prosecutor in the high treason case, had argued that after holding the constitution in abeyance the ratification of the illegal steps was made under ‘coercion’ by different functionaries of the state. Therefore, their act could not be treated as an abetment.

Published in Dawn, November 1st , 2014