Monitoring Desk: Pakistani Ex-Military Dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf died in Dubai where he was living since 2016 while was announced a fugitive by Pakistani courts.
He was ranked the top aid of the United States in the U.S. war in Afghanistan against the Taliban after the 9/11 tragedy.
AP reports that Musharraf, a former special forces commando, became president through the last of a string of military coups that roiled Pakistan since its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India. He ruled the nuclear-armed state after his 1999 coup through tensions with India, an atomic proliferation scandal, and an Islamic extremist insurgency. He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.
he lived abroad in Dubai and London, attempting a political comeback in 2012. But Pakistan instead arrested the former general and put him under house arrest. He faced treason allegations over the Supreme Court debacle and other charges stemming from the Red Mosque raid and Bhutto’s assassination.
The image of Musharraf being treated as a criminal suspect shocked Pakistan, where military generals long have been considered above the law. Pakistan allowed him to leave the country on bail to Dubai in 2016 for medical treatment and he remained there after facing a later-overturned death sentence.
Later in life, Musharraf lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid criminal charges, despite attempting a political comeback in 2012. But it wasn’t to be as his poor health plagued his last years. He maintained a soldier’s fatalism after avoiding a violent death that always seemed to be stalking him as Islamic militants twice targeted him for assassination.
Meanwhile, the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) of the Pakistan Army released the following statement:
CJCSC & Services Chiefs express heartfelt condolences on the sad demise of General Pervez Musharaf, Former President, of CJCSC, and Chief of Army Staff. May Allah bless the departed soul and give strength to the bereaved family.
He was an absconder in the Benazir Bhutto murder case while a Special Court granted him a death sentence in the High Treason case but he was living in Dubai as a fugitive. His Review Appeal in the High Treason case was not heard by higher courts because he was not ready to surrender to the court which is compulsory for accepting a hearing for the appeal. He would be buried in Karachi.
