PAKISTAN: Authorities detain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto at home to stop her going ahead with a planned rally

Pakistani police cordoned off the home of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday (November 9) and sealed off a park in Rawalpindi where she was due to hold her first rally since President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule. A senior official in Islamabad said the measures had been taken for Bhutto's own protection. But Anwar Baig, Senator of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) said the imposition of emergency rule by General Musharraf was totally illegal. Bhutto is demanding the president set a date for the election, steps down as army chief, restores the constitution and releases people detained since the weekend. She had planned to hold a rally in Rawalpindi near Islamabad on Friday (November 9). But police were out in force early, erecting barbed-wire barricades on all roads leading to the park where the meeting was to take place and also sealed off Bhutto's home. Bhutto had also been planning a rally in Lahore on November 13. Residents in the eastern city are divided over whether she should go ahead with it. One shopkeeper said it could bring more chaos, but another resident said it was the democratic right of people to hold rallies. Musharraf imposed emergency rule last Saturday (November 3) citing a hostile judiciary and rising militancy. But the president, who took power in a bloodless 1999 coup, said on Thursday (November 8) that general elections would be held by February 15, about a month later than they were due. He also said he would quit as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president once the Supreme Court ruled whether he was eligible to stand for re-election last month while still army chief. However, two-time prime minister Bhutto, who returned from more than eight years of self-imposed exile last month, said she wanted more than vague statements on the elections.

ITN Source | November 9, 2007

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