New Pakistan PM frees judges

Pakistan's new prime minister has ordered the release of judges detained by president Pervez Musharraf.

The National Assembly elected Yousaf Raza Gilani, a loyal ally of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, five weeks after her Pakistan People's Party defeated Mr Musharraf's party in the country's elections.

He immediately announced that the judges the president detained when he declared emergency rule in November would be freed.

Minutes later, police removed barricades from outside the house of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and other judges who had been held under house arrest.

Cheering supporters thronged the front garden of Chaudhry's house and he came onto a balcony to address them, saying: "I thank all of you and the entire nation on my behalf and on behalf of the judges of the superior judiciary who have been detained illegally and unconstitutionally."

Mr Gilani, who was jailed by the Musharraf regime in 2001, was elected the troubled country's new prime minister by 264 votes to just 42 cast in support of president Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League.

He marked the victory by calling for a UN investigation into Mrs Bhutto's assassination on December 27 last year.

Mr Gilani told the assembly: "It is because of the martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto that democracy is being restored. It is a historic event."

He also asked parliament to pass a resolution condemning the "judicial murder" of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father and Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister.

He was toppled by the military in 1977 and hanged two years later after a court controversially found him guilty of murder.

There are fears president Musharraf's opponents, who have a two-thirds majority in Pakistan's two-chamber parliament, will reverse the constitutional changes he made while head of a miltary regime and force him from power.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

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