Pakistan offers to bring Pervez Musharraf's mother home

Islamabad, April 1: The Pakistani government has offered to bring back former president Pervez Musharraf's mother, who is undergoing treatment in Sharjah, rather than let him travel to the Gulf country, a media report said Tuesday.

The development came a day after Musharraf was indicted of high treason by a special three-bench court, Dawn online reported.

Musharraf's counsel had asked the court to allow him to visit his ailing 95-year-old mother, Zarin Musharraf, in Sharjah but the court ruled that it was up to the government to decide on the issue.

"We offer from the government to bring his mother to Pakistan," Defence Minister Khwaja Mohammad Asif said after the court ruling.

Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party chief Mehmood Khan Achakzai, a complaintant in the case, had opposed Musharraf's travel to Sharjah, pointing out that when Musharraf was the president and present Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was in exile in Saudi Arabia, Sharif was not allowed to attend his father's funeral in Lahore.

During Musharraf's 1999-2008 rule, thousands of people might have not been allowed to leave jail to meet their ailing relatives, Achakzai added.

Musharraf was again moved to the intensive care unit of the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AIFC) in Rawalpindi Saturday after his condition deteriorated on receiving the news of his mother, who is suffering from respiratory complications.

Musharraf was indicted Monday for high treason to which he pleaded not guilty.

Musharraf has been charged with high treason for suspending the constitution when he declared an emergency in 2007.

He took over in a bloodless coup when he dismissed the government of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

The former military strongman, who resigned in 2008 as president and went into exile, returned to Pakistan last March last year to run in the parliamentary elections. However, a court disqualified him from competing in the general elections in May.

IANS