- PM Office spokesman says former military ruler has not submitted any request for permission to visit Saudi royal family
- One news channel claims govt has accepted Musharraf’s request, others say PM to take decision
Confusion prevailed on Saturday over the issue of permission to former military ruler, General (r) Pervez Musharraf to visit Saudi Arabia for just one day to commiserate the death of Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, as news channels reported that a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had considered the former strongman’s request to remove his name from the Exit Control List (ECL) while the Prime Minister’s Office denied that the former had submitted any such request in the first place.
A spokesman at the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that they have not received any application from the former military ruler for permission to travel abroad.
On the other hand, one news channel claimed that the government has decided to allow Musharraf to visit Saudi Arabia for one day, while some other mainstream news channels claimed that the Interior Ministry had thrown the ball in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s court, asking him to take a decision as he pleases.
An anti-terrorism court in Balochistan had indicted Musharraf on January 14 in the 2006 killing of Baloch separatist leader Nawaz Akbar Bugti, the latest legal hurdle facing the former military ruler since his return from self-imposed exile two years ago. The case is unlikely to cause any immediate problems for the 71-year-old, who has not attended a single hearing in the case since it began in 2013.
Musharraf was previously indicted for treason in March last year over his imposition of emergency rule in 2007, but proceedings have stalled since then as the country’s civil authorities and judiciary appear to lack the will to take on the powerful military.
Musharraf has been staying with his daughter in Karachi where he travelled for tests at a navy-run hospital in April last year and the indictment took place in his absence. He is on bail in four other major cases linked to his time in power including the 2007 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in a gun and suicide attack.
Facing impeachment following the 2008 elections, Musharraf resigned as president and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.