JURIST - Paper Chase: Pakistan court orders seizure of Musharraf's property, freeze of bank account

[JURIST] Pakistani Judge Shahid Raffique on Saturday ordered that the property of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] be seized and his bank account frozen in connection with his alleged involvement in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto [BBC obituary; JURIST news archive]. The judge ordered the nation's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) [official website] to conduct the seizure because Musharraf had failed to respond to multiple subpoenas [Al Jazeera report].

Musharraf was arrested in February [JURIST report] because he had not cooperated during the investigation of Bhutto's death, and investigators alleged that Musharraf did not provide adequate security [DAWN report] for Bhutto when she was assassinated during a campaign rally in Pakistan in 2007. According to an interim criminal charge sheet [JURIST report] by the FIA, Musharraf appointed and allegedly gave orders to the police officers accused of failing to protect Bhutto on the day she was assassinated. Specifically, the prosecution document alleges that Musharraf ordered the officers to remove a security detail for Bhutto prior to her departure and that he later ordered the same officers to hose down the scene of the assassination.