Zardari 'suffering from severe mental problems'

Source: Telegraph

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto and himself a leading contender for the country's presidency, was suffering from severe mental illness as recently as last year, it has been reported.

Mr Zardari used the medical reports to successfully fight a now defunct English High Court case Photo: Reuters

Mr Zardari, co-chair of the Pakistan People's Party, was diagnosed with a range of psychiatric illnesses, including dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The illnesses were said to be linked to the fact that he has spent 11 of the past 20 years in Pakistani prisons fighting charges of corruption. He claims to have been tortured during his incarceration.

In March 2007 New York psychiatrist Philip Saltiel found that Mr Zardari's time in detention left him with severe "emotional instability", memory loss and concentration problems, according to court documents seen by the Financial Times.

"I do not see any improvement in these issues for at least a year," he wrote.

Stephen Reich, a psychiatrist from New York State, said Mr Zardari was unable to recall the birthdays of his wife and children and had thought about suicide.

Mr Zardari used the medical reports to successfully fight a now defunct English High Court case in which the Pakistan government sought to sue him over alleged corruption. The case was dropped in March.

Mr Zardari was not available to comment on the documents, but Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the Pakistan high commissioner to London said he was now fit and well.

NRO vs Judges Restoration

'The' written agreement

Thieves behind NRO [who doubts ?]

Kashimiri people practicing their right UNLIKE Pakistani people

Look how they are using there right to disagree, where are pakistani
people ... we need to tell rulers what we feel about their "policies"
and their jumps (like a rabbit) over their self announced "resolutions".

Pakistan demands immediate repatriation of Dr. Afia

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's parliament Thursday demanded the immediate repatriation of a female scientist Afia Siddiqui held in the United States on charges of trying to kill US officials in Afghanistan, officials said.

A resolution moved by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and adopted unanimously by the lower house also demanded immediate information on the whereabouts of Afia Siddiqui's three children, they said.

Siddiqui, 36, disappeared from the Pakistani port city of Karachi in 2003 and featured on a list of US suspects linked to Al-Qaeda the following year.

Parliament's move comes amid outrage in Pakistan over her arrest after members of her family insisted that the US-educated Siddiqui was innocent and accused US forces of secretly holding her for the last five years.

The house called upon the government to "take up the matter with the US government urgently to provide her necessary medical attention including hospitalisation and regular access to Pakistan embassy officials."

It demanded her "immediate repatriation."

Siddiqui, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was arrested on July 17 in Afghanistan, extradited to New York on August 4 and indicted the next day on a charge of attempted murder.

She was wounded during an alleged shootout with FBI agents and US military officers when she was questioned in Afghanistan. A US court put her in medical care. She was on a 2004 US list of suspects linked to Al-Qaeda.

Untitled

Zardari wants minus-one formula on judges' restoration: Nawaz

WASHINGTON: Pakistan Muslim League Chief Mian Nawaz Sharif says People Party Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari has given minus-one formula for the restoration of deposed judges.
In an interview to US newspaper today, he said his party would quit the ruling alliance if judges were not restored. However, he said PML-N would not pose any threat to the government as opposition.
PML-N chief said, “It will be a bad day for the democracy and country if judges are not reinstated.”
Actions of former president Pervez Musharraf would be protected in case judges were not restored, he noted, adding several members of PML-Q expressed the desire to join his party.
Sharif said that democracy was more important than becoming a prime minister again.
"I or anyone else in my party are not the presidential candidate, said Nawaz adding the decision should be based on national

How he missed all the buses, including the Nobel Prize

By Hamid Mir

ISLAMABAD: Was the fallen Pervez Musharraf living in a fool’s paradise right till the end? He may have been.

Just a few minutes before his speech he told one of his close friends that the coalition partners will start fighting with each other very soon, there will be more political instability in his absence, people will come out on the streets in the next six months and they will demand “come back Musharraf”.

That is the reason Musharraf is not leaving Pakistan. He will stay in Pakistan under heavy security and he will wait for the people to call him back. He is sadly mistaken. The people of Pakistan have already rejected him and his policies on Feb 18. They were sick of him and that was why even George W Bush abandoned him in his last days but Musharraf still thinks that Pakistan cannot survive without him.

He claimed in his Monday speech that Pakistan was about to be declared a failed state in 1999 but he rescued the country and brought a new recognition for Pakistan. He never mentioned Kargil which gave a bad name to Pakistan, he never mentioned anything about the judicial crisis that he created in 2007 and he never mentioned anything about the assassination of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.

Read Full article

An interesting prediction abt Musharraf's return to the political scene :)

Excerpt from a story published in The News, August 19, 2008

Musharraf's insistence that he would stay in Pakistan is again based primarily on the calculation that until the two major parties break up he should be provided a safe stay and when they break up, he would re-launch himself, probably as a leader of the Karachi-led Mohajir population, with or even without, the blessings of Mr Altaf Hussain.

This streak of leading the Karachi political scene was more than evident in his recent visits to Karachi where he tried to create his own lobby of businessmen and mohajir leaders, almost to the exclusion of Altaf Hussain and his hard core supporters.

Musharraf's address one night a few weeks ago to a select group of Karachi businessmen, where his strong supporter Governor Ishrat ul Ebad was present and Karachi Mayor Mustufa Kamal made his famous, but mysterious, comment that within a few months the geography of Karachi may change, was seen by Altaf Hussain as an attempt to challenge him on his turf.

Within hours of that Musharraf address, his first after months of post-Feb 18 polls hibernation, Altaf Bhai had to arrange his own gathering of Karachi businessmen and address them from London. Why this need for a parallel event felt by the MQM headquarters in London was obvious: Mr Musharraf was trying to hijack his party and Altaf Bhai is not an amateur in fighting turf wars. Soon thereafter both Governor Ebad and Mayor were summoned to London for whatever happens to MQM men when they err.

Full Story on Random Thoughts

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SAC documentary video

Restoration of judges should have been step 1... :(

Nawa-i-waqt

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Impeachment of Musharraf

Nawa-i-waqt

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Afia Siddiqi????

Jang Group Online

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