Pakistan court rejects Pervez Musharraf's plea for military trial
Updated
A Pakistani court hearing treason charges against former president Pervez Musharraf has rejected his plea for trial in a military court.
The civilian court in Islamabad has set a date next month to indict Mr Musharraf.
His lawyers had challenged the right of the civilian court to try the former military leader who appeared in person before judges for the first time on Tuesday.
"This application is dismissed," lead judge Faisal Arab said at the end of Friday's hearing.
The three-judge bench ruled that he was no longer in the army and that high treason can be tried exclusively in a special court.
"This decision to try Musharraf in a civilian court is factually wrong. The facts have been twisted," Mr Musharraf's lawyer Ahmad Raza Kasuri said.
Mr Musharraf faces the death penalty if found guilty of charges related to his suspension of the constitution and imposition of emergency rule in 2007, when he was trying to extend his rule as president
The judges have set March 11 as the date to indict the former general, who was ordered to appear in person to hear the charges being read out against him.
He was first ordered to appear before the tribunal on December 24, but has missed repeated hearings since then, due to bomb scares and health problems that saw him taken to hospital on January 2.
Mr Musharraf became the first former military leader to appear in the court on February 18 in a trial seen as a victory for the country's increasingly assertive judiciary.
He has repeatedly said the trial is a politically-motivated vendetta.
Mr Musharraf ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup in 1999 and forced him into exile.
However, Mr Sharif returned eight years later and won a landslide victory in a general election in May.
AFP/Reuters
Topics: world-politics, courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, crime, pakistan, asia
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