By IANS,
Islamabad : Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s constitutional immunity from prosecution has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
In a petition filed in the court Wednesday, Communist Party of Pakistan leader Jamir Amhad Malik contended that article 248 of the constitution, under which the president enjoyed immunity related only to criminal cases and not to domestic or international corruption cases.
He also wanted the court to interpret whether this immunity was in line with the Islamic provisions of the constitution, Online news agency reported.
The petition acquires importance since the government has reopened a $60 million Swiss money laundering case against Zardari after the Supreme Court overturned an amnesty against graft that former president Pervez Musharraf had promulgated in October 2007.
The amnesty, in the form of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) had been promulgated primarily to enable former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Zardari, who faced a slew of corruption cases, to return home from self-imposed exile.
Bhutto was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack as she left a political rally in the adjacent garrison town of Rawalpindi Dec 27, 2007.
A host of other politicians, retired army officers and bureaucrats had also benefited from the NRO.
The Supreme Court had in December 2009 nullified the NRO and had ordered the revival of all cases that had been closed under it.
On March 31, Pakistan’s corruption watchdog, National Accountability Bureau (NAB), had informed the Supreme Court that it had written to the Swiss authorities to reopen the case against Zardari.