Wood for the trees

Futile Swiss letter only betrayed judicial overreach

The Cheshire grin at the letter in French received by the PPP government from Swiss authorities last week has finally ended a long ordeal for President Asif Zardari.

At least that will be the case as long as he remains in office.

The flat response from the Swiss authorities not only drove home the point about there being no two ways about a fundamental law governing international immunity for heads of state but also brought into sharp focus the apparent overreach the apex court had exercised in dealing with the matter.

It is not as if the president enjoys a spotless reputation — his journeys laughing all the way to the bank being the stuff of legend, but the law demands irrefutable evidence which in the case of money laundering charges against Zardari for allegedly receiving kickbacks in the award of a pre-shipment contract to a Swiss company in 1994 haven’t quite stuck.

The case has been as close to a wild goose chase as possible save for a solitary conviction that was set aside in 2003 in any case because the supposed evidential documents presented in the case were not original.

The fractious stand-off between the PPP government and the superior judiciary for a good three years saw the country’s first unanimously elected prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, ousted for his refusal to do the court’s bidding.

It begs repetition that the closure of the Swiss case was requested by none other than the-then Attorney General Malik Qayyum on the orders of President General Pervez Musharraf following the dictator’s future power-sharing deal with Benazir Bhutto in the summer of 2007.

The development was replete with ironies. The case had been pursued vigorously by Musharraf to have Zardari and Benazir convicted — initially with the intention to drive them out of politics, and later, to improve his bargaining power with the Bush Administration, which began to politically marry Musharraf (as president) with Benazir (as prime minister) for a dream team to pursue Washington’s war-on-terror.

Still more ironical was the request for withdrawal made by Qayyum, a former judge of the Lahore High Court, infamous for the so-called ‘tape scandal’ which revealed his insidious role in fixing Benazir’s conviction at the behest of arch rival Nawaz Sharif’s government which had initiated the case in the first place.

The conviction was set aside, forcing Qayyum to resign.

The Swiss case was the brainchild of the dreaded Ehtesab Bureau chairman Saifur Rehman – notorious for “straightening out” political foes with Machiavellian methods, including physical torture. The factitious documents were presented before Pakistani and Swiss courts.

When the Zardari-Benazir couple challenged these documents before the accountability bench of the Lahore High Court, it directed the-then registrar, Moazzam Hayat, to visit Switzerland and meet with Daniel Devaud, the then-Examining Magistrate in Geneva to verify the authenticity of the documents.

When the registrar requested the Swiss magistrate to attest the copies of documents presented to LHC on the assumption that the original documents were presented in the Swiss Court, the magistrate expressed his inability, saying no original documents were submitted in the Swiss courts.

Rehman was reported to have hired the services of a specialist to build the case. Initially, on the basis of non-original documents, the Swiss magistrate had awarded a sentence of up to six months to the Zardari-Bhutto couple in July 2003, which was later set aside on their appeal three months later.

The same case was revived however, when Benazir began to push for return home from self-exile against Musharraf’s wishes. The case plotter was elevated as the deputy chairman of the Accountability Bureau and he succeeded in reactivating the case after multiple visits to Switzerland.

Musharraf wanted the Zardari-Bhutto couple convicted by Swiss courts which was evident in the NAB official’s burning of the midnight oil. It was no April Fool’s call in 2006 when Geneva’s Court of Appeal allowed him to represent Pakistan to initiate criminal proceedings against the couple on charges of money laundering.

The script however went awry when a sleuth who had earlier exposed the Qayyum tape scandal expressed his willingness to appear before the Swiss court as a witness.

Sensing that the Swiss episode might meet the same end that cases in Pakistan had because of lack of incriminating evidence, especially after the emergence of the witness, Musharraf’s man was forced to retreat.

Two years later, on another April Fool’s day, Attorney General Malik Qayyum had the displeasure of writing to the Swiss courts to withdraw the cases.

Subsequently, the decades old corruption cases against Benazir and her spouse as well as thousands of other politicians were quashed under the NRO by Musharraf.

However, the superior judiciary, which was sacked by Musharraf, who feared it would declare his re-election bid in military uniform void, returned in 2009 on the back of a popular movement which forced President Zardari to reinstate it after he had reneged on his earlier promise to do so.

When a petition was filed in the case, the Supreme Court declared the NRO null and void, directing the PPP government to reopen the graft case against its own president by writing a letter to the Swiss authorities.

The government dithered and dodged — even losing its prime minister in the bargain after he was convicted for contempt of court and de-seated for refusing to write the letter — before finally relenting last year. The draft was vet by the apex court thrice before the approved letter was sent to Switzerland.

Now that the Swiss authorities have declined to reopen the case citing international immunity, it is unclear if the decision also nixes the case altogether for time bar.

However, what is clear is that the clash of egos has cost Pakistan dearly in terms of time and energy wasted.

The writer is Editor, Pique Magazine. He can be reached at: [email protected]