Pakistan Court to Charge Prime Minister With Contempt

Pakistan’s highest court said on Thursday it would charge Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani with contempt of court for refusing to reopen a corruption case against his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari.

The Supreme Court said it would start the contempt trial on Feb. 13. If convicted, Mr. Gilani would face up to six months in jail and possible disqualification from public office.

The court order was a significant escalation of long-simmering tensions between the judiciary and the government and threatened to plunge the country into fresh political turmoil as its leaders debate the contours of a new strategic relationship with the United States.

Since 2009, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has insisted that the government should write a letter to Switzerland, reopening a longstanding corruption case against President Zardari.

The government stalled, employing a variety of legal maneuvers to dodge the legal order in court, while in public it argued that Mr. Zardari enjoys immunity from prosecution while in office.

But the court’s patience ran out last month, when it ordered Mr. Gilani to appear before the court under threat of contempt charges. Amid dramatic scenes Mr. Gilani turned appeared, flanked by supporters, and was represented by Aitzaz Ahsan, one of the country’s most famous lawyers.

But despite Mr. Ahsan’s arguments, the court made good on its threats on Thursday, when it initiated the contempt charges, in the process reviving a perilous clash of powerful institutions involving the government, military and judiciary.

It comes just days after another major judicial crisis facing the government, involving accusations of treason and popularly known as Memogate, started to recede from the front pages.

The central witness in that crisis, an American businessman of Pakistani origin named Mansoor Ijaz, failed to turn up in Pakistan to testify. On Monday, a panel of judges allowed Husain Haqqani, the former ambassador to Washington who faces the most grave charges, to leave the country.

Mr. Ijaz claimed in a newspaper article in October that he had sent a secret memo to the Obama administration in May on behalf of the Zardari government, seeking American help in warding off a possible coup after the Pakistani military was humiliated by the American commando operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed. Mr. Ijaz later said that Mr. Haqqani was behind the memo. Mr. Haqqani denied the accusation but was forced to step down.