MULTAN, Nov 4: The office-bearers of the Lahore High Court and district bar associations have demanded immediate release of all the “political prisoners,” including Asif Ali Zardari and Makhdoom Javed Hashmi.

Speaking at a joint press conference on Tuesday, LHC (Multan bench) President Ahmad Raza Bokhari, Multan DBA President Sheikh Jamshed Hayat and Punjab Bar Council’s Habibullah Shakir described detention of the two politicians as political victimization.

The press conference was mainly addressed by Mr Shakir, who said Mr Zardari was first detained in 1990 when the then government had instituted 13 references against him, but 12 of those were quashed even before the PPP’s comeback in power in 1993.

Mr Zardari, he said, sworn in as federal minister directly on his release after 27-month incarceration. Now in detention since November 1996, when the Benazir government was disbanded by Farooq Leghari, he claimed that Mr Zardari was the longest serving political prisoner in the history of the country.

He alleged that his leader was implicated in a case of drugs smuggling by the present regime only to freeze his accounts in foreign banks.

“Mushtaq alias Black Prince, who was named by the government as the co-accused of Mr Zardari in the case, is filing petition after petition in the courts that he is being forced (by the government agencies) to name Zardari in the case, but he has refused to so.”

Now, he said, the courts had “mysteriously” stopped hearing the case and the Black Prince was not being produced in any court for the last 11 months.

The lawyers also condemned the PML-N acting president’s arrest, insisting that he did nothing wrong by circulating a letter.