NEW YORK, March 13: The Human Rights Watch has demanded that the Pakistani government must end the arbitrary detention of the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

The HRW also called upon the United States and other governments to urge President Musharraf to promptly take meaningful steps to restore respect for the rule of law in the country.

“By brazenly and unlawfully dismissing, detaining and humiliating the chief justice, President Musharraf has created a constitutional crisis at the judiciary’s expense,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, on Tuesday.

“Musharraf has undermined judicial independence before and nothing could make that more clear than his arrest of the chief justice.”

“The government must allow Justice Chaudhry a fair, open hearing where he has adequate opportunity to study the charges levelled and benefit from legal advice,” said Hasan.

“Anything less will amount to a mockery of justice.”

“The brutal assault on lawyers demonstrating for the chief justice raises bigger issues about the rule of law in Pakistan,” said Hasan.

“The government needs to respond to this by taking appropriate action against those government officials responsible.”

Research by the Human Rights Watch indicates a pattern of “disappearances” of individuals in Pakistan and their interrogations by US law-enforcement agents in illegal detention centres run by the ISI.