CJ Iftikhar’s suspension & troubling story from Army House; what went on March 9, 2007?
Iftikhar’s image transformed from ‘a judge turned national cause’, as noted in NYTimes on July 28, 2007, to the politician ‘pursuing personal agenda’
On March 9, 2007, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was suspended by the Musharraf government in a ham-fisted manner resulting in a full-blown judicial crisis and Lawyers Movement. It laid the foundational brick for judicial activism which resurged with a vengeance after Iftikhar’s restoration only reaching new heights under former CJP Mian Saqib Nisar. The events of March 9 were the small tremor that later grew into a massive wave of protests. Not only the legal fraternity, but the masses also took to streets. As mentioned in Harvard law Review study “The Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement and the popular currency of Judicial Power” in May 2010, a thought ‘typical of Pakistanis at the time’ was what a farmer said in an interview: “I support the lawyers, because if Musharraf can do whatever he wants to this man, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, then none of us is safe.” This disposition reflected a symbolic articulation and understanding of struggle for independent judiciary. “Indeed, the Chief Justice was the closest to a personal embodiment of the law that one could find in Pakistan.”
However, the trail of events that occurred in Army House on March 9 is marred with conflicting reports from two parties: CJ himself and five military and agency chiefs. CJ had spilled the beans on what took place in Army House when he delineated that in addition to Musharraf, chiefs of MI and ISI had asked him to quit. He was harassed by the military leadership as according to CJP’s affidavit, he was confined for over five hours in a room, constantly told that he was ‘restrained to act as chief justice’ while his car was stripped of the flag.Furthermore, he was held in communicado at his residence, with all the communications with outside world cut off. In an interview to Tallat Hussain on Aaj TV (May 18), Musharraf termed this a matter of “tactical handling” by agencies.
On June 7, heads of two intelligence agencies and the president’s chief of staff filed affidavitsin the Supreme Courtagainst Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who had accused them of pressurizing him to resign.
in the affidavit by Chief of Staff, inter alia, he denied allegations by the chief justice about restraining him against his will, or cordoning off his house while pointing out that the meeting had been arranged after Iftikhar’s request. Further, responding to allegation of keeping his family members in communicado, the affidavit pointed out that “from 5 p.m. on 9 March 2007 till 13 March more than three hundred and fifty calls were made/received from/on the mobile phone of his son.” However, this contrasted with what Musharraf responded on the question of detention, in an interview to Kamran Khan of Geo TV: “Yes, I would like to tell that where he was living, we had a concern that there should be no media trail out of this and there is not politicization of this…”
In their affidavits, the heads of agencies, MI and IB, further claimed that the CJ kept regular contact with them and even suggested that parliament should be dissolved and fresh elections be held under him.
DG MI Major General Nadeem Ijaz highlighted in his six-page affidavit that "[h]e (Iftikhar Ch) was of the view that the President should dissolve the assemblies as they were becoming a nuisance and hold elections under the CJP." Curiously enough, the head of ISI, Pakistan’s premier counterintelligence and spy agency, did not submit a similar affidavit, raising suspicions that the judicial crisis involved hidden actors and vested interests. “…No one made any threat. The CJP having clearly informed the President and the Prime Minister that he would face the reference, the question of anyone of us making any demands of any kind on the CJP simply did not arise," the Intelligence Bureau head said. The Affidavit submitted by chief of Military Intelligence (MI) alleged that “the CJ used to remain in touch with the officer in-charge of the Military Intelligence, Lahore, and used to task him on a regular basis to provide information about judges in Punjab to build a database for his own reference.”
The above conflicting developments over shadowed mal intentions of CJ Iftikhar Ch, the pivotal point for Lawyers Movement, who was latter asked, on an occasion by Benazir Bhutto as well, ‘to make a political party of his own’. His unwarranted political interference and tainted public perception of character disgruntled other parties who had flocked to streets to fight for his restoration. Thereby, Iftikhar’s image transformed from ‘a judge turned national cause’, as noted in NYTimes on July 28, 2007, to the politician in black court misusing office “to fulfill personal agenda,” as pointed out by his lawyer Aetzaz Ahsan on July 5, 2016.