Pakistan sets up special court to try Musharraf

Pakistan on Tuesday set up a special court to try former military ruler Pervez Musharraf for high treason, an official statement said. The announcement came hours after the Supreme Court forwarded the names of five judges suitable to sit on the special court, following a government request on Monday. Three judges have since been chosen by the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who is now on an unprecedented collision course with the all powerful military. "The Prime Minister has approved names of judges for special court for trial of high treason under article 6 (of the constitution)," his office said in a statement. "Mr Faisal Arab, from Sindh High Court, being the most senior, will be the head. Ms. Syed Tahira Safdar of Baluchistan High Court and Mr. Yawaar Ali of Lahore High Court will be the (other) members". "The government has notified the tribunal," the statement added. After receiving the government request to try Mr Musharraf, the head of Supreme Court, chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, ordered all the high courts from the country's four provinces and Islamabad to put forward the names of any judges eligible for the three member special tribunal. The decision to try Musharraf for treason, announced live on TV by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Sunday, means the former Pakistani leader faces the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. It comes after Musharraf was granted bail in other cases against him, stoking rumors a deal for his departure could be imminent. The treason accusation relates to Musharraf's decision in 2007 to impose emergency rule shortly before the Supreme Court was due to decide on the legality of his re-election as president a month earlier while he was still army chief. Musharraf overthrew the government of Nawaz Sharif -- elected to power again in May this year -- in a bloodless military coup in October 1999, but a year later the Supreme Court validated the take over. During the 2007 emergency rule he suspended the constitution and parliament, and sacked top judges who declared his actions unconstitutional and illegal. Musharraf technically became a free man this month when an Islamabad district court granted him bail over a deadly raid on a radical mosque in the capital in 2007. But faced with Taliban threats to his life, he has remained under heavy guard at his villa on the edge of Islamabad.